


Ex Machina

by sual



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Ben Solo is messed up, Droid fetish, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Robophilia, Top!ben, bottom!Hux, droid!Hux, past dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-30 22:06:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 32,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6443686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sual/pseuds/sual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU inspired by Ex Machina where Ben Solo never became Kylo Ren, General Hux is a droid that used to be human, and they might just be what the other needs. </p><p>Warning for a whole lot of robophilia and cruel and unusual uses for droids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! It's been years since I last wrote fanfiction, and this is my first one on here. Hope I'm not too rusty, I return with this messed up thing. I'm not sure how long it will be yet, but here goes nothing!
> 
> Inspired by Ex Machina, but also the music video for "The World is Not Enough" by Garbage, which makes a pretty good Kylux song in general.

Ben Organa Solo looks down at the BB-4 unit lying in pieces on his workbench with something close to disgust.

“Of all my children, you are the biggest disappointment,” he tells it seriously. BB-4 chirps indignantly up at him, still trying to wriggle around despite its head being detached from the ball of its body. “The fuck do you and your pilot even _do_ to be in here every other day? None of the other BBs are in here half as much,” Ben chides, picking through his toolbox carelessly.

He’ll admit to himself that his griping comes from a place of love; the BB droids are his creation after all, an improvement on the old R2 units that he’s certain R2D2 resents him for.

“You know they say 4 is an unlucky number among some species,” Ben tells it as he gets to work repairing its damaged power core. “You just couldn’t leave it to BB-13, could you?” The droid shrieks at him angrily, and Ben allows himself a fond smile.

Ben knows the other Resistance personnel think he’s weird for hiding away in his workshop, talking to droids. That’s okay. He prefers the company of machines to people; organic lifeforms are just so _loud_ in the force, their minds chattering away even when their mouths are shut. There’s no filter to internal thoughts, either. He’s heard all kinds of insults about his person that would never be voiced aloud. Droids are so blissfully quiet in comparison, and so direct with their opinions when they have them.

He ties his dark hair back and tries to concentrate on the soft humming of BB-4’s processor, rather than the background noise of emotion from passing technicians outside. He feels the flow of energy snaking through the droid’s components, follows it along each path in his mind until it leads him to the frankly alarming number of faults in its hardware.

“I’m going to confiscate you from Wexley,” Ben mutters to it.

He feels Rey approaching long before she comes barrelling into his workshop.

His baby cousin is one of the few people he can stand to be around; her mind is always so endlessly full of love and light and happiness. He’s not used to those feelings being turned towards him, but she looks up at him like he’s her big brother. He’d tried his best to feel resentful of her when he’d had to give his training up, but even he can’t bring himself to feel anything negative towards Rey. Instead, he dutifully plays the part of the overprotective older brother, taking somewhat malicious joy in trying to chase Poe and Finn’s attentions away from her.

“Ben!!” she shouts as she comes tumbling in through the door. For all of her Jedi training, she’s never quite learned any grace.

“Back from the mission already?” he asks mildly. BB-4 is chirping happily at Rey from where it’s still unassembled on his bench. Rey comes to throw her arms around his shoulders, peering over his head to look at the BB unit making a valiant attempt at rolling off the bench.

“4 again?” she says knowingly.

“Wexley is no longer allowed a BB unit. I’ve decided it,” Ben says by way of answer. Rey loses interest and starts bouncing on her heels behind him. He makes a great show of sighing loudly. “Go on, what do you want.”

“I have brought you the _best_ thing,” she grins, excitement rolling off of her in crashing waves. Ben frowns, attempting to read her thoughts more clearly- “Nuh-uh!! No peeking, it’s a surprise! Come on, come on, follow me!”

Rey rushes out the door before he can respond. Instead he glares down at BB-4 before standing up and dusting himself off.

“Consider this a time-out,” he tells it.

 

*

 

At the age of 10, Ben has his first vision.

The vision comes with absolute certainty that this is his future if he continues on his current path: him, older, masked and dressed in black, red lightsaber in hand and dead children underfoot. He surfaces from the vision gasping for air, lungs on fire as he desperately tries to choke oxygen down.

He hands Luke his training saber after that. His uncle doesn't say a word – just draws Ben in for a tight hug, and sends him back to his parents. There is too much of the dark in him; they both know it.

Ben tries not to be upset. He never quite fit in with the other padawans anyway, and his father takes it as an opportunity to spirit him away in the Millenium Falcon for a few years, to his mother’s chagrin. (He feels her secret relief when she finds out; the First Order is gaining power across the galaxy, and he’ll be safe with Han. Still, he feels her missing him in the force now and then).

Knowing he can never allow himself to live up to his potential with the force, Ben tries to find other hobbies to distract himself; he becomes fluent in Shyriiwook, to Chewbacca’s great joy. He tries to learn how to pilot ships from his father, but after crashing into a crowded market and racking up a monumental bill in damages, Ben quickly discovers that he didn’t inherit that particular skill. He does, however, have Han’s talent as a smuggler, making appalling use of Jedi mind-tricks whenever he can (Han gives a good show of telling him off for it, but he can feel the waves of pride rolling off his father, no matter what he claims otherwise).

But what holds Ben’s interest most of all is machinery.

He likes to think he got this from his grandfather – he’s heard stories from R2 of how Anakin rebuilt Threepio, of podracers on Tattooine. (He tries not to think about the other things he inherited from Vader.)

Eventually the war forces Leia to call them all back; Han and Chewie are needed on smuggling and supply runs. He meets little Rey for the first time and trains with the Resistance as a mechanic, specializing in droids and artificial limbs. There’s something beautiful in artificial intelligence, he thinks, of trying to give life to neatly built machines. Maybe it’s that they have the calm, patient logic he so sorely lacks in his own mind, or the jigsaw fit of this joint to that, wire to connector.

The unbearably loud thoughts of everyone else on base, on the other hand, make him nauseous.

He watches Luke and his padawans wistfully. He knows it’s for the best; he has his droids to keep him company. Rey brings him scraps of machinery from all over the galaxy to cheer him up, and he tries to feel content.

 

*

  
  
Ben finally catches up to Rey outside of the interrogation chambers. There’s a crowd gathered in front of the two-way mirror that Poe is trying to shoo away.

“Don’t you all have things to do?” Poe tries fruitlessly, attempting to cover up the view into the room with his body.

Ben clears his throat.

The crowd seems to flinch all at once – he is the General’s son, after all. There’s a kind of grudging respect for him, even as the usual words pass across their minds when they turn to look at him ( _creepy_ , _awkward, failed Jedi_ ). But those don’t annoy him nearly as much as the one stray _droidfucker_ he picks up on, and he doesn’t even have to pretend to darken his expression at the crowd. They quickly scatter after that.

“Man, what I wouldn’t give to perfect a scowl like that,” Poe jokes, a relieved grin spreading across his face at the sight of Ben and Rey. Over his shoulder, Ben can see his mother and Finn inside the interrogation chamber.

“I thought you said you’d brought me something,” Ben frowns down at Rey. She beams up at him and tugs him closer to the window, Poe neatly stepping to the side to give them room.  

Ben suddenly sees that it is not a ‘what’, but a ‘who’.

“Well holy shit,” he says. There, cuffed to the table, sits General Hux of the First Order. The man glowers at Leia with a stony expression. He doesn’t seem injured in any way, though his red hair has been ruffled out of the usual perfect sweep he seems to favour in all the propaganda pictures.

“Look at his right arm,” Rey points, sensing his thoughts. “It’s a prosthetic, I saw it on the ship.” Now that he looks at it, it does seem to just be hanging there limply a few inches below where it should be, bent at an awkward angle.

“And did you break it too?” Ben returns, raising an eyebrow with amusement.

She punches him lightly in the shoulder. “No! He…he broke it himself, actually. He was trying to escape by ripping it off. I bet they’ll ask you to fix it, it looks fancy.”

As if sensing this, Leia turns around in her seat and crooks a finger. She somehow manages to look Ben dead in the eye despite the two-way mirror.

Obediently he enters the interrogation room, hovering by the doorway.

“Ben,” Leia greets him warmly. “We need you to take a look at the General’s arm, if you have a moment.”

From the corner of his eye, Ben sees the General stiffen minutely. “I assure you, that is unnecessary,” Hux says coldly. Interesting. Ben wonders if there’s something good hiding under that sleeve after all. He turns to try and get a read on Hux's mind and comes to a sudden, chilling realisation:

The General’s mind is completely, utterly silent.

“Nonsense,” Leia smiles, all teeth. “We can’t have you claiming that the Resistance mistreats its prisoners, now, can we? Finn, escort the General to his cell, if you would.”

“I’ll get my tools,” Ben says quickly, hurrying back to his workshop. He can’t help but be curious now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh thank you for the feedback so far guys! I'm glad I'm not the only one into droid!Hux haha. 
> 
> This chapter starts to get a little darker now, but things will go back to more of the humor side eventually, I promise! Hux's body is very much based on Ava in Ex Machina, so if my descriptions aren't doing it for you, definitely go watch the movie. Watch it anyway for adorable Domhnall Gleeson!
> 
> I don't have a beta reader either so feel free to point out any mistakes orz

Hux sits on the narrow bed of his cell with a scowl plastered to his face, still bundled up in his greatcoat. It occurs to Ben as the door locks behind him that the General seems a lot smaller in person than he does in the broadcasts they intercept from time to time.

Throwing his toolbox down with a heavy crash, Ben gives the man a searching look that he hopes is intimidating. Hux turns his scowl towards Ben and instead looks distinctly unimpressed. He tries again, fruitlessly, to get a read on the General’s mind. He’s come across people able to block him before – Luke keeps his guard up at all times, for one thing, and other species can be hard work to crack – but there’s something…off, about the man seated before him. Instead of something hidden, there’s a great, empty nothingness, like he’s trying to mind-read a corpse.

Ben shakes off the unease settling over him and gets to work.

“Coat off, please,” he says, rummaging around in his toolbox for a diagnostic scanner.

Hux just continues to glare at him. Fine. He can play this game. With a lazy hand swept towards the General, he shoves the over-large coat down with the force instead.

The other man stiffens immediately, a flash of terror crossing his face for just a moment before it returns to its glower. Odd…Ben is sure he’s heard of force users in the upper ranks of the First Order before, and the presence of Jedi among the Resistance is well known. Are his abilities so surprising? He brushes the thought away and instead tries not to get annoyed as he sees that the broken prosthetic is still trapped in yet another layer of the General’s uniform.

“Are you going to take this one off yourself, or do I have to do it again?” he says dryly, folding his arms.

Hux turns his head resolutely away from Ben, scowling at a panel on the wall, but at least he starts to unbutton his tunic with his functioning arm.

“Good,” Ben says. Down to his undershirt, Hux looks even smaller now.

As it’s pulled from its sleeve, Ben can see that the prosthetic arm has been detached from its connecting port mid-bicep, hanging on only through a few sad looking wires. It’s an amazing piece, really – the skin matches the rest of Hux’s shoulder exactly. If he hadn’t torn it out, Ben doubts it would have been detected until he got to medical. He casts his eyes down the limb – it looks like something inside the lower half has snapped in the effort to pull free, breaking off into an odd angle but not quite piercing the synthetic skin.

He settles on the bunk next to Hux and drags his scanner over the arm, trying to get a view of the components inside; Rey is right, he’s never seen anything like it, sophisticated and compact with as few wires as possible. As suspected, one of the metallic bones has snapped clean in two, and some of the fingers have come loose from their joints. He keeps moving up to where the prosthetic attaches, trying to get a sense of where it ends.

And moves up. And up. And up.

Ben’s eyes get progressively wider as he follows the bone structure of Hux’s body. His shoulders are metal. His torso is – Ben’s not even sure what the torso contains, but it’s not flesh or bone or organs. Instead everywhere he looks there are only metal components, softly humming machinery all the way from shoulder down to legs down to toes.

He looks up at Hux in disbelief. The General continues to glare at a fixed point on the wall, but his wide eyes betray terror. Surely, the Starkiller of the First Order, surely he can’t be entirely…Ben takes a steadying breath. He moves the scanner to Hux’s head and audibly gasps at what it shows.

“How many of you are there?” Ben demands, standing up to his full height in one violent motion.

Hux says nothing.

“Are you a replica? A decoy?” he snaps. The General continues to resolutely look away from him, so Ben snatches Hux’s jaw between his fingers and twists his head sharply forwards. “Answer me! What are you!?”

The smaller man looks him in the eye now, but keeps his lips pressed firmly together.

Ben pushes Hux’s jaw away irritably. His mother needs to know about this – the real Hux could still be out there. He starts to pack his tools together, not stupid enough to leave them where Hux can reach, and he’s about to hurry out the door when the General finally speaks, so softly he almost misses it.

“Are you going to melt me down?”

Ben turns to give him a disbelieving look. Hux – this Hux, anyway – is staring at that panel on the wall again. His face is a picture of morbid resignation.

He leaves without answering.

 

*

 

Ben explodes into the debriefing room all tall gangly limbs, panting from having run straight from the cellblock.

“Mom, your office, now,” he snaps, ignoring the confused looks of Leia’s officers around her. He always forgets that he’s supposed to address her formally in situations like this. Thankfully she seems to sense the urgency rolling off him and swiftly rises to her feet, following as he darts back down the hall to her office.

“What’s going on?” Leia closes the door behind them, moving around to her side of the desk out of habit.

Ben shoves his diagnostic scanner in front of her, much harder than necessary. “He’s a _droid._ ” Leia’s head snaps up in alarm. “Look, these are the scans I just took. The prosthetic just, it kept going, there’s- there’s nothing _human_ there. It’s all droid.”

His mother sits down heavily in her chair, blinking disbelievingly as she scrolls through the diagnostic scans.

“A decoy?” she mumbles, more to herself.

Ben shakes his head. “I asked, he wouldn’t answer. But this is…this is some really advanced stuff, Mom. Expensive. Would they put all that time and money into a decoy?”

Leia shakes her head, then freezes suddenly.

“Unless it’s a trap,” she says, eyes searching wildly for Ben’s. “A bomb? Did you pick anything up?”

Ben frowns, pulling the scanner back towards him. “I didn’t…there’s nothing that _looked_ like a bomb, but I don’t know what half of these components are. They could be anything,” he replies, unsure. “I would have sensed it in the force if there was danger…wouldn’t I?”

Leia purses her lips. “Do a more thorough scan. Take him apart, if you have to. If you feel even the slightest doubt, get Luke to come in there with you,” she orders.

Ben nods solemnly.

 

*

 

Despite being almost equal to him in height, Hux somehow manages to look even smaller when Ben returns to the cell with his tools. The droid remains in just his undershirt, coat and tunic discarded to one side. Hux has his remaining arm wrapped tightly around himself, face artificially neutral.

“Undress,” Ben orders coldly.

That gets the droid’s attention, head looking up in alarm. The droid is extraordinarily expressive – it almost makes Ben feel guilty, as if he’s about to take apart something living.

“I need to look at your internal components to make sure you’re not hiding anything dangerous,” Ben explains, gentler now.

Hux schools his face back into neutrality and sighs. An odd feature for a droid, Ben thinks. The General begins stripping down with his remaining functional arm, mechanically pulling off each piece of his uniform until he’s down to his briefs. His entire body is covered in smooth, synthetic skin – now with all of it displayed, Ben can see the subtle seams that separate its pieces. The skin is pale and detailed, freckles dotting his shoulders and chest. It seems…odd, for a military droid to have such care given to its creation. The droid hesitates for a moment as he reaches the waistband of his briefs, then pulls those down quickly too.

Ben has to rub his eyes to make sure he’s not seeing things.

“Are you a _pleasure droid_??” he says disbelievingly. Hux continues to be frighteningly realistic between his legs, too. The droid’s expression sours as Ben says this, refusing to look at Ben again and absolutely not gracing him with an answer. It occurs to Ben that this might be an offensive thing to ask an artificial intelligence, and then mentally slaps himself for even caring.

“I’m going to peel back your synth-skin now,” he announces instead. “Lie down. Please.”

Hux wrinkles his nose. “I can do it myself,” he sniffs. “I highly doubt you’ve handled components like this before.”

Ben shoves the droid down on the bunk with the force and feels inordinately satisfied with the resulting yelp Hux gives.

“You’d be surprised,” Ben mutters, crossing the room to begin the process of removing the synthetic skin. He starts with the skin around Hux’s hips – he’d rather get this particular component out of sight as soon as possible. The mechanics underneath start to reveal themselves slowly; Hux’s cock seems to be a typical attachment, built into the skin layer but connecting to a port underneath. Ben wants to punch something when he finds his eyes lingering much too long on the attention to detail spent on Hux’s member.

He quickly continues up Hux’s torso, quietly removing the freckled covering of his body as the droid stares at the ceiling impassively. He feels his throat dry as his eyes rake over the droid in front of him, unsure if it’s the lifelike body or the silvery components underneath making his heart stammer. The General dutifully stays down on the berth, allowing Ben to gently remove the rest of the synth-skin until only his head and the front of his neck is covered.

“Sit up, please,” Ben swallows.

Hux does so, and Ben finally gets a good look at the droid without its false skin. The General’s components are covered by a thin, durasteel mesh, holding the shape of his body; between the gaps in the mesh Ben can see LEDs blinking inside him, lining the length of his spine and casting a faint, red glow outwards. The mesh seems to have seams like the skin did, allowing for openings to reach the hardware inside.

The unease from earlier suddenly comes flooding back to Ben – he sits down heavily in the chair opposite the bunk. With the skin removed, he can hear Hux’s internal components quietly humming as they work now, near silent save for a faint vibration in the force. Something seems to pull Ben’s attention to where Hux’s sternum would be; there’s something…it catches, in the force, like a tiny black hole.

The droid seems to notice his intense focus on that point, and he raises his hand to cover it, shrinking back slightly.

“You’re going to have to show me whatever that is,” Ben flicks his brown eyes back up to meet Hux’s.

“It’s not important,” Hux returns quickly, a faint tremor of desperation in his voice.

Ben looks unimpressed. “Like I said, I need to check your internal hardware for anything dangerous,” he sighs. “This will go easier if you just open up now.”

Hux hesitates a moment before opening up the mesh panel of his torso with a click. “It’s not important,” he insists again anyway, hand still faintly hovering over the area protectively. “It’s just a…a personal effect.”

Knocking the hand away lightly, Ben peers inside the open cavity of Hux’s torso now. There’s a small, metal box where the disturbance is coming from; it doesn’t seem to be attached to anything by wires, only somewhat haphazardly soldered onto one of the supporting metal structures. It’s incongruous, sloppy next to the great care taken in every other part of the droid’s construction. The box doesn’t seem to set off any alarm bells in his mind, at least, and he’s sure the General is about to lash out at him if he tries to touch it, so Ben moves his attention down to the other components of Hux’s torso.

“Will you tell me what these are?” he asks. “Serial numbers, things I can trace.”

The smaller man blinks, peering down at his open body with a frown. “I don’t believe there are any,” he says after a while. “They’re not…on the market, so to speak.”

Still, he starts pointing to different pieces, rattling off their functions quietly. “This is the power core,” he gestures to the piece taking up what would be half of his ribcage. “The other side is a ventilation system,” he points to an empty slot, “a canister goes here for specialist functions sometimes. The engine is here, next to the cooling unit,” he continues, moving lower to his abdomen. “The rest are processors and memory storage, hydraulics, the usual. The main processor is up here,” he finishes, tapping the back of his head.  

Despite being fascinated by what he’s seeing, Ben knows Hux is only humouring him to distract him from the box.

“Open,” Ben commands when Hux starts to shrink back again under his focus. “I’m not…going to remove it, or anything,” he adds. “You can keep your…what was it? ‘Personal effect’? Once I know what it is.” The droid looks down miserably. He pushes the box open as if walking to the gallows. Ben isn’t sure what he expected – a bomb, possibly. Some kind of toxic gas to knock him out, maybe. If it really is a personal effect, then a photo or a holo, some other small trinket from a former owner, perhaps.

An orange kyber crystal glints back at him instead.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this is my first AO3 fic, I don't know if this is one of those sites where it's rude to update too often, but I figure I may as well post things when I have them done orz I'll burn through my backlog soon enough I think, but if it is annoying then let me know!
> 
> Chapter 4 will also be up shortly.

That’s it. Ben’s getting Luke in here.

He stands abruptly but Hux darts his hand out to grab Ben’s wrist in a bone-breakingly hard grip before he can turn to leave. The droid looks up at him with wild, desperate eyes.

“You can’t tell anyone!” Hux hisses. He seems to have realized Ben’s intention, because he continues, almost a whisper, “Especially not Skywalker. He’ll _know_.”

Ben frowns down at the droid. The kyber crystal isn’t even attached to anything, he can see that clearly now – it just sits, faintly glowing in its case. Why is Hux so frightened? “Know what?”

Hux falters at that. Swallows.

“If I,” he croaks, actually has to clear his throat, and god does Ben want to look into this droid’s programming, who even writes a function like that? “If I tell you everything. You have to keep it to yourself. Let me keep this crystal. Please.”  

If guilt-tripping is part of Hux’s code, Ben is going to kick himself later. Instead he sighs deeply and sits back down. “I can’t promise that until I know what it is you’re so scared of,” he relents, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

“Fine,” Hux nods, finally letting go of Ben’s wrist. The metal fingers twitch restlessly as he settles them back on his lap, before reaching in to pull out the crystal.

“This is me,” he says softly. “Everything that’s left of me is in this crystal.”

“’Me’?” Ben repeats.

Hux clenches his jaw, eyes hardening. “I was human. Commandant Brendol Hux’s son. I was...a sickly child. Not the legacy he wanted,” he says tonelessly. “There were…experiments with artificial bodies being done, at the Arkanis Academy where he worked. Trying to make the physically weak students stronger by placing their minds in new bodies. Things that could be easily controlled. They had the perfect bodies, but no way of getting our…our souls, I suppose you’d call it, into them. There were crude copies of our minds made, but they were just basic AIs. The same limitations as any common droid. There were other, messier attempts. Most of them ended with death.”

Ben shudders.

“Supreme Leader Snoke found out about the attempts,” Hux continues. “He had the patients brought to his citadel. I suppose the experiments amused him, and he wanted to try his own theories on us. I don’t know…what, exactly, he did to us, something with the force, but one by one he dragged our minds out of our bodies and placed them in kyber crystals.”

“That’s unheard of,” Ben frowns. “There are Sith legends of reanimating the dead, but…”

Hux huffs, a short, cold laugh. “It didn’t work. Mostly. Their minds were too weak, or the crystals shattered under the strain,” he says quietly.

“You were the only one,” Ben concludes for him. Hux nods. “And…your human body?”

“It was brain dead, afterwards,” Hux shrugs. “They turned off the life support. I watched it die. I believe I’m buried somewhere on my father’s estate.” The droid looks up sharply at Ben, a reply dying on the taller man’s lips. “Snoke kept the crystal. Its location was hidden. My consciousness isn’t...was never directly in this body, anyway. I access my body remotely.” Hux bares his teeth suddenly. “I spent fifteen years looking for this crystal. _Fifteen years_ as Snoke’s hostage – the slightest rebellion and I would have been turned into an empty shell. And then I finally found it and your wretched Resistance pilots intercepted me. Of all the _force-damned days_ ,” he spits venomously.

The sudden tug of Rey’s consciousness brushing against his mind pulls Ben out of the moment. _You’re late for dinner_ , it says, so full of concern. _What’s wrong?_

“I need to think about this,” Ben says, standing, glad for an escape from the oppressive atmosphere of the General's cold fury. Hux’s expression closes off, so he adds, “I won’t…tell anyone. Yet. Until I’ve talked with you more. I’ll be back.”

 

*

 

Ben wanders into the canteen on autopilot, sitting down heavily by Rey and her two boyfriends. They’re recounting the success of their mission in capturing Hux together, something he’d usually listen to with interest, but now all he can think about is the droid – cyborg? No, wouldn’t that require some of the original body to be left over? – waiting in a cell to find out its fate.

When word gets out, the entire Republic will be calling for Hux’s death. Will they tell them that Hux is a droid? Will they have him thrown into a ship crusher and destroyed? Or will they keep up the charade and pretend to hang him first? A firing squad would be idiotic, there’s no blood for Hux to shed. Perhaps Hux is lying, and he really is just a decoy, the real man still out there somewhere; it all seems like a terrible waste of a good droid to Ben. He’s pretty sure he could buy a ship big enough to house most of the Resistance personnel on base with the money it would cost to build a droid like Hux.

He thinks of the way that kyber crystal called to him with the force, the pale eyelashes framing the terror in Hux’s blue-green eyes. Programming a droid to act as an icy dictator, he can fathom. Giving a war machine that much humanity, he can’t.

“Kshhht, Resistance base to Ben,” Rey is saying somewhere to his left, mouth covered by her hands to imitate…something, a radio control, he guesses. He doesn’t have to try very hard to ignore her; for once his own thoughts are louder in his head than those of everyone else in the canteen.

He’s finally dragged from his musings when he feels something rolling over his feet under the table. Ben reaches down without looking and comes up with BB-8 held aloft over his food. The droid chirps happily at him with a delighted wriggle. He can’t help but feel his mood lift at its primitive joy.

“You are the most perfect and beautiful of all my children and I never should have given you to Dameron,” Ben tells BB-8 seriously, paying no attention to Poe’s indignant “ _Hey!_ ” from the other end of the table.

He sets BB-8 back on the floor and pushes the tray of food he’s been picking at towards Finn. The ex-stormtrooper takes it gladly, still enchanted with the concept of second helpings and leftovers a year after his escape.

 

*

 

Ben hovers outside the two-way mirror to Hux’s cell for a while before he goes in. He’s not sure what model the droid’s eyes are – they could well be heat sensitive, he could already know that Ben is standing here. Hux’s attention doesn’t seem to be on the mirror though. He sits much where Ben left him, hand hovering over his now closed chest protectively, stare focused on but not really seeing the floor.

This could all still be a trap, Ben reminds himself. A part of him would really rather it was – that way he won’t have to deal with the knowledge of what was done to get Hux inside that body.

With a sigh, Ben turns towards the two guards stationed outside the room. “Why don’t you two get dinner before the canteen closes up?” he prompts gently, lacing the force through each sound. “I can take it from here.” They nod with glazed eyes, shuffling away in the direction of the canteen. Once they’re out of sight Ben draws himself up and enters the cell.

Hux makes no move to acknowledge him as Ben sits down heavily in the chair across the bunk again.

“Why…this?” Ben waves a hand vaguely towards Hux. The droid tilts his head slightly. “Why this body?”

“Espionage,” Hux replies with a scoff, as if Ben is an idiot. “They needed me to look real.”

“But you were a General, not a spy,” Ben frowns.

A small, self-satisfied smile stretches across Hux’s mouth. “Yes. Eventually,” he says evasively.

Tapping one long finger against his thigh thoughtfully, Ben gives Hux a hard look. “That still doesn’t explain your body,” he decides. “You could have gotten away with just your hands and head. ”

Hux’s face falls into a grimace. “ _Espionage_ ,” he hisses again. Then, pointedly, teeth bared, “I would rather not talk about the nature of those missions.”

 _Oh_. “So you _were_ a pleasure droid,” Ben says anyway, never one to let a sore spot go. He’s like his father that way, he supposes.

The droid is shaking with fury now. “May I remind you that I had leverage against me,” he sneers, tapping at his chest pointedly. “There are all sorts of awful things you can do with a human mind in a synthetic body. I was more than just a– a ‘pleasure droid’, as you keep calling me.”

Ben hums to himself. “’Specialist functions’,” he repeats. “That’s what you said earlier.”

Hux stands suddenly with a snarl, glaring down at Ben. “You want to know? _Fine_ ,” he jabs a finger violently at one side of his chest. “This ventilation system is used for poison. The empty slot is for a gas canister, the poison to be delivered straight into the victim’s mouth through a kiss.”

Ben opens his mouth to speak, but Hux shouts over him. “They turned me into a bomb once. I sat in the middle of a Republic convention and uploaded my consciousness to a new body and detonated my old self. Do you know how it feels to have an actual, honest-to-stars _bomb_ ticking inside of you?

“And _yes_ ,” Hux outright yells now, and Ben is glad that he sent the guards away, “I _was_ used for seduction, I _was_ ordered to sleep with our enemies. I had to fuck one of my father’s rivals once. My own father ordered that of what used to be his son. I had to choke a man to death as he came. _All_ of my lovers have died in my arms, by my hand. Is that what you wanted to know?! _Does that satisfy you!?”_

Ben can only blink, stunned by the outburst, as Hux stands shaking with fury. Hux turns with a wordless roar to kick the bunk, before sitting down on it heavily, rage seemingly spent for the moment.

“I was _human_ ,” he hisses softly. “I was a person. But my handlers seemed to forget that.” His face suddenly twists into a cold, dangerous smile. “So I killed them all. I killed everyone who knew and repurposed myself, clawed my way up to a position where I was too valuable to ever be used like that again.”

“Your father knew,” Ben whispers.

“And I killed him too,” Hux sneers. “But not before I got the blueprints for my bodies out of him. That was my leverage, you see. Snoke couldn’t rebuild me. And I was too useful to be damaged.”

Hux leans back against the wall, breathing a hollow laugh suddenly. “All of the clawing and fighting to escape that life,” he sighs, closing his eyes. “And for what? To be a prisoner again. I was free for two hours. Just two hours, before your Resistance caught me.”

They sit together in silence for a while, Ben too horrified to speak, Hux apparently done with the conversation.

He feels a sudden, yawning chasm of pity for the droid open up in him. The former General is a broken thing, Ben realizes, both inside and out, his humanity stripped from him in every way. The Republic will never excuse his actions, but Ben thinks he understands, just a little, what made Hux this way.

He reaches out slowly to unscrew Hux’s broken arm from its socket. Hux cracks one eye open to glare at him suspiciously, but Ben only draws the separated arm onto his lap and rummages around his toolbox to begin the process of fixing it. A peace offering, of sorts. They sit in stilted silence as Ben fiddles with it – he’s going to need to take it back to his workshop, he can’t fix the snapped bone here, but he can put the fingers back in their joints and patch up the ripped wires, at least.

“Why now?” he asks suddenly, and Hux peers at him curiously. “Why did you steal your kyber crystal back now?”

“Because it took me this long to find it,” Hux says quietly.

“You were intending to leave the First Order after you’d done it?” Ben prompts as he pulls out a soldering pen.

“Naturally. I betrayed the Supreme Leader. To stay was certain death.”

Ben hums. “I need to take this to my workshop,” he says eventually. “You’ll have it back in the morning.” Ben starts to pack his things away.

“And here?” Hux asks. Ben looks up at him, confused. “Is my death certain here, too?” he clarifies.

Ben is silent for a while.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I truly don’t know what they intend for you. Perhaps if you cooperate, you might at least be spared your life.”

Hux nods, satisfied with that for now.

 

*

 

Once a year, Ben makes a point of taking the ship his father bought (stole) him for his sixteenth birthday to the Outer Rim.

He stops at whatever planet takes his interest for a few days, turns off his tracker and revels in being totally apart from civilisation. He’ll hop from place to place for a week or so, but his yearly excursion always ends on the same planet – a small, smoggy little thing that prides itself on being on as few maps as possible. Ben isn’t exactly sure what its official name is, if it even has one, but he’s heard the locals refer to it as Eros III.

He has…not a friend here, exactly. Eros isn’t the kind of planet you visit to make friends. More of a business acquaintance, with whom he has a very specific understanding; Malal Tun owns a brothel here, staffed entirely by pleasure droids. They’re expensive things to hire, much less to build and maintain – Ben is certain he doesn’t want to know how Malal has acquired so many.

He has a deal with Malal. He fine-tunes and fixes the droids, in exchange for a night spent with whichever one he chooses.

It’s not that he couldn’t choose a cheaper establishment on the seedy planet (or that he hasn’t tried a few). There are plenty of creatures of all genders and species and races to choose from on Eros III. It’s not even that he couldn’t attempt a relationship with someone in the Resistance – that, he’s tried too.

But with every flesh and blood partner he touches, the vision of himself all dressed in black, the bloody, squelching flesh of his loved ones under his foot as he steps over them, comes back to haunt him, and he shies away.

There are healthier ways to deal with his nightmares, Ben is sure, but the feel of a droid under him, metal skeleton unforgiving and heavy, is comforting. He has no worry of breaking them beyond repair, of digging his nails too deep and feeling squishy, vulnerable tissue beneath them. There is no mind racing in a droid, distracting and pulling him under. Only cold, blissful silence.

He’ll leave Eros III then, satisfied for a little while. But still, some nights, he takes himself in hand and remembers those droids, thinks of what it would be like to have one all for himself, with smooth, new skin not worn down by hundreds of rough hands.

 

*

 

Ben wakes up hard that night, dick pressing uncomfortably against his mattress. He groans, rolling onto his back. Easier just to take care of it and go back to sleep, he thinks. With a drowsy sigh he twists a hand down his length and tries to think of Malal’s droids.

Instead, the only vision that comes to him is one of Hux glaring up defiantly at him, so alive and human and real even as his exposed metal body twists invitingly underneath Ben. His release comes sudden and hard, a punch to the gut that has him wide-awake in seconds.

Filled with an awful bone-deep want, Ben doesn’t sleep again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interrupting things with some family time this chapter.

After lying awake until 5AM, Ben finally gives up on sleep and rolls out of bed.

He’s been thinking of Hux since he woke up, of the execution that surely awaits the droid. He’d like to tell himself that he’s been trying to think of ways to save Hux out of the goodness of his heart, but he knows that his desire to see the droid live is entirely selfish. As if the force has deemed fit to show him everything he’s ever wanted on a silver platter while holding it just out of reach, he thinks mirthlessly. It’s pathetic, but even just having someone around whose mind he can’t see or feel is desperately welcome to Ben, regardless of his…other fantasies.

Heaving a sigh, he pads quietly to the refresher of the small ship to get ready for the day. Despite the tiny space, he likes the privacy of living in his ship, away from the noisy dorms of the base. It’s still quiet outside when he leaves for the cellblock, the sun only just crawling over the horizon. He slips easily into the building, a night-shift technician giving him a lazy nod as he passes.

Then the technician trips on a tiny cleaning droid.

She curses at it under her breath as Ben watches, while the droid lets out an angry squeal in return. The encounter is over almost as soon as it begins, the technician storming away and the droid muttering to itself as it polishes the floor, back to being totally unnoticed by all the personnel that pass it.

Slowly, an idea starts to form.

 

* 

 

“I have a proposition for you,” Ben says when he enters Hux’s cell at 6AM.

He offers the fixed arm back to the General. The droid’s skin is still where he’d left it, but Hux has gathered his greatcoat around his shoulders now, sitting hunched on the bench underneath it. The glow of his internal LEDs cast a strange light inside the coat. He looks up at Ben with suspicion, taking the arm carefully, as if this is some sort of test.

“How much of your memory is data and how much is you?” Ben asks, dragging a chair over to sit in front of Hux. It takes a while for the General to reply as he twists his arm back into its socket.

“It’s…a mix?” the droid squints at him, uncertain. Hux flexes his repaired fingers experimentally, seeming content with the result.

“So you don’t know.”

Hux narrows his eyes. “I remember things the same way you do,” he says acidly. “I’m just…not sure how much I would remember without the data there to fall back on. I’ve grown used to being able to call on my databanks when I need them.”

“So if we removed the data and wiped it from you,” Ben begins, and Hux’s face is already forming a scowl, “you’d still be you.”

“I’d still remember things from the First Order, if that’s what you’re asking.” Hux pulls his greatcoat tighter to himself, as if he can armour himself with it.

“But if I asked you for a list of every stormtrooper’s number and individual statistics, you’d no longer be able to tell me,” Ben concludes, more to himself than to Hux. “That’s fine.”

Hux glares at him uncertainly for a while. “I’m not hearing a proposition,” he says at length.

Ben taps his long fingers against his thighs, considering his plan. “Okay,” he says. “Okay…the proposition is this. You pretend to be only a droid. I don’t tell anyone about your kyber crystal, or that you used to be human – if they ask, it’s an energy source. You’re going to willingly give up your data to the Resistance, and then I’m going to wipe you clean. You pretend to be wiped entirely, a blank slate.”

Hux curls his lip. “And then what?” he sneers. “The Resistance owns me? _You_ own me? You put me to work for your cause instead? I spent a decade trying to gain my freedom, not to replace one master with another.”

“It’s this or be destroyed,” Ben snaps back, standing to tower over Hux. “Whether you’re human or droid, the Republic wants you dead. You said yourself that you can’t go back to the First Order now, after stealing your crystal. What were you going to do next, hm? What was the grand General’s plan for freedom?”

Hux looks away and clenches his jaw tightly. “You just want to use me,” he mutters accusingly, “like everyone else who ever knew.”

With a sigh, Ben sits back down heavily. “If I can convince my mother to let me keep you – the pretend, blank you – I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to,” he says slowly. “I can protect you from the Republic. You’ll have your freedom, to an extent.”

“To the extent that I’ll be following you around like a lost puppy for the foreseeable future,” Hux grumbles.

“Something like that,” Ben smiles. “You can have until noon to think about it, if you want.”

“Unnecessary,” Hux sighs. “Short of the 0.4% chance of escaping the Resistance, this is the option with the highest probability of not being crushed into a small metal cube.” Ben gives him an odd look. “I’ve been running the calculations while you talk,” Hux adds defensively. “You should know that the chance of escape after you pretend to wipe me rises dramatically.”

“Now run the simulations on what happens when you do,” Ben snorts. “I’m sure the results won’t be promising. Weigh your guaranteed safety with a force user specializing in droid repair against your other options carefully.”

The General reaches out his newly repaired hand. “You have a deal,” he says. Ben shakes it with a nod.

“Good,” Ben smiles. “Just don’t tell me the odds of my mother agreeing to this. I don’t think I want to know.”

 

* 

 

“Mommy…” Ben ventures, and Leia immediately rolls her eyes. Nothing good ever comes from Ben calling her that. The men in her family are nothing if not predictable.

“You either want something or you’ve done something,” she says, absolutely not in the mood for this. She has a meeting in half an hour with the Republic and she still doesn’t know whether or not to reveal that Hux is a droid.

“Mooommyyy,” Ben sing-songs, coming up to squeeze her into a tight hug from behind. Doubly suspicious.

“What _is it_ , Ben?” Leia says, exasperated already.

“Iwanttokeephim,” says Ben all in a rush. Leia opens her mouth to retort. “Ah-ah, wait! Hear me out! He’s willing to put down all of his firewalls and give us all of the data on his drives. Unencrypted. Everything. General of the First Order, do you know the kind of information he has to have in there? How long it would take to extract and decrypt manually?”

Leia narrows her eyes. “And he gets what out of this?”

“We don’t destroy him,” Ben says. He has the awkward, crooked smile on he knows his mother finds most endearing. “He wants what every AI wants, to live. Basic principle of survival instinct programming. We’ll wipe him clean, I get my droid, Hux is gone, Republic is happy, ding dong the wicked wookie is dead.”

“Dare I ask what you even want him for?” Leia sighs, rubbing her eyes tiredly.

“Are you _kidding_?” Ben says, much too loudly for this time of day. “He’s the most advanced droid I’ve ever seen in my _life_ , there’s components in him that aren’t even on the market!”

“And you’re sure those aren’t traps.”

“I’m sure, they’re too well connected to the rest of him. Come on, Mom, I gave up my force training for _you_ , let me have this!” He gets down onto his knees dramatically and begs. He’s used this particular guilt-trip to get what he wants at least twenty times before. Leia throws up her hands in despair.

“You gave it up so that you wouldn’t become a Sith murderer, you didn’t do anything of the sort for _me_.”

“It was all because I loved you!!” Ben declares with gusto, throwing himself at her feet.

Leia squints down at the pathetic heap of her son on the floor. “You’ll wipe him clean.”

“Total blank canvas,” he agrees.

“He won’t follow some dormant programming directive and go on a murderous rampage the minute he reboots.”

“No directives left to follow, Jedi’s honour.”

Leia taps a finger against her chin. “We might have to pretend to execute him.”

Ben shrugs from where he’s lying. “Sure.”

“I don’t know what the Republic wants to do with him yet,” she sighs. “Do I tell them he’s a droid?”

Her son rolls over onto his back to look up at her, hair a messy black halo around his head. He looks thoughtful. “It would be embarrassing for the First Order if it was revealed to the public that they were led by a droid,” he says eventually. “I’m not even sure if anyone other than the General’s superior knows. He’s a puppet, essentially…it would be a blow to morale, I think.”

Leia smiles and pokes Ben with the toe of her boot. “Smart boy. See? You could have gone into politics,” she says fondly. Ben makes a face. “Alright, you can have your droid. But you’re getting me _everything_ on those drives and wiping him clean, got it?”

Ben stands abruptly to squeeze his mother into a bear hug. “Thank you mommy!” he says sweetly. Leia smacks angrily at his shoulders, getting the distinct feeling she’s been conned into something. Again. _Like father, like son_ , she thinks loudly.

 

*

 

Rey waves at him when he enters the canteen.

“Don’t you have training?” Ben asks, dropping his tray down next to her. Finn is wolfing down a pile of pancakes on her other side, while across the table Poe is nursing his coffee, still half asleep.

“Nope, Dad- ah, Master Luke, said I could have some time off after catching Hux,” she grins. Her eyebrows raise with amusement. _You seem happy this morning_ , she thinks at him.

 _I may have just convinced Mom to let me keep a certain very high profile droid_ , he grins around a spoonful of yoghurt.

“No _way!_ ” she yells out loud, startling Poe from his fugue state. “How?”

Finn looks between them, cheeks still full of pancake. He gives Poe his patented _they’re doing the telepathy thing again_ look. The pilot doesn’t seem to catch it, so tired that his eyes are blinking independently of each other. Rey unconsciously uses the force to push his mug out of harms way in case Poe suddenly collapses on the table.

“We’re gonna wipe his drives down,” Ben says, chewing a breadroll thoughtfully. “Blank slate for me to work with.”

“What will you do with him?” Rey grins, wiggling her eyebrows, and Ben flushes; his cousin is the only one that knows about his yearly trips to Eros III, after he’d accidentally sent a very embarrassing memory her way when she’d annoyed him with her repeated attempts at matchmaking. He’d tried for weeks to rip that memory out of her, and she’d been all too willing to let him, but sadly for the both of them it hadn’t worked.

“Are we talking about a what or a who here?” Finn asks suspiciously. Rey mouths ‘Hux’ at him quickly, at just the wrong moment that Finn starts choking on his food. Rey gives him a heavy thump on the back, looking apologetic.

“ _No_!” Finn hisses when he can finally breathe again. He points at Ben accusingly, flounders a moment, then points at Poe instead. “Dameron, back me up here!”

Dameron has no idea what they’re talking about, only that it’s too early for this shit. “Ben is a big boy now and he can do what he wants,” he yawns widely. That response seems to fit most situations, Poe thinks. He mentally congratulates himself on a job well done. He’ll find out what he’s just approved later, he supposes.

 

*

 

Poe most definitely does not approve later.

“And your cousin wants a pet genocidal dictator… _why_?” he asks Rey, gesturing to the scene in front of them. Ben is inside the cell with Hux; the droid is wearing his First Order uniform again, but the collar has been turned down to give Ben access to a panel on the back of Hux’s neck. Rey’s cousin is currently connecting a series of wires from the droid to a portable console. The former General looks none too happy about it, Poe thinks, watching with Rey and Finn outside through the two-way mirror.

Rey elbows Poe in the side. “You know he loves his droids. Come on, let him have this,” she says pleadingly. “He’s erasing all of Hux’s memories and personality, so who cares what he does with the body?”

“Me,” Finn grumbles. “I’m going to have to look at Hux’s stupid face every day. _Again_.” He holds his head in his hands. “Oh shit I was right, there really is no escaping the First Order…even when I’m free I’m stuck with this asshole...”

“Melodramatic, but he has a point,” Poe says. “Finn’s not the only one that’s not going to want even a memory of Hux wandering around here.”

Rey crosses her arms stubbornly. “Well if it makes Ben happy, _I_ for one support him,” she declares. Both of her boyfriends roll their eyes.

“Ben just can’t do any wrong in your eyes, huh,” Finn says, leaning his chin on top of Rey’s forehead.

Rey shrugs, a soft smile spreading over her features. “I’ve seen the wrong he could have done,” she says gently. “Everything else is nothing in comparison.”

Her two lovers just look confused. Finn gives Poe the _Jedi shit?_ look. Poe gives Finn the _Jedi shit_. look in return.


	5. Chapter 5

“Why do you keep looking at that mirror?”

Ben peers down at the cables currently attached at the nape of Hux’s neck. They’re not the best quality, just makeshift things he’d put together in an hour, but the ports Hux is equipped with aren’t exactly standard issue. Two of the cables keep popping loose, and it’s slowing everything down; he’s starting to consider taping the damn things on. There’s _years_ of information stored in the droid – the extraction process is going to take long enough without the cables breaking free every five minutes.

“Because there are three very loud idiots outside the cell,” Ben grumbles distractedly. He can hear very clearly everything that Rey and her two gentlemen friends are saying, and he wants to yell “I’m right here!” at the two-way mirror. Instead he wrinkles his nose in Rey’s direction.

“I don’t hear anything,” Hux frowns.

“It’s,” Ben gestures a hand vaguely, “a force thing. They think and feel very loudly.”

“And me?” Hux turns slightly to ask. The action pushes one of the cables out again, and Ben irritably twists Hux’s head back where it was. The droid sounds genuinely curious though.

“Stay _still_ or I really am I going to tape these cables to you,” Ben growls. “I can’t hear you at all. It’s glorious, you’re like a corpse.”

He’s pretty sure Hux has settled for making a face, because he doesn’t reply to that. At least he doesn’t move his head and jostle the wires again. They sit in silence for a while, and just as Ben thinks the cables might finally hold, two break free at once. Ben pushes them back in roughly.

“ _Ow_!” Hux yells, slapping a hand over the ports. He’s been quiet long enough that it makes Ben jump in surprise; he feels the trio outside jump, too. “Fucking- _careful_ ,” Hux snaps, rubbing at one of the left ports.

The droid finds himself spun around to face Ben, who is staring at him aghast. “You can _feel_?” Ben says disbelievingly.

Hux raises an eyebrow. “I receive sensory input and form an appropriate emotional or physical reaction,” he replies, not sure why this is surprising. “Exactly the same as you do. The stimulus is just a little different, that’s all.”

That doesn’t do anything to alleviate the horrified expression on Ben Solo’s face. “How much?” he says.

“What?”

“How much can you feel?” Ben clarifies.

Hux looks down at his own hands, baffled by this. “I have sensors embedded in my synth-skin. Pressure, texture, temperature, I can still register that,” the droid hums to himself. He’s never considered it too deeply before.

“Pain?” Ben presses. “You said ‘ow’.”

“Pain is a physical response to something being in disorder. It’s a necessary defence mechanism,” Hux sniffs. “There was a static shock when you put that plug in, I responded accordingly. It’s a little more serious when you’re made of metal, you know. Honestly, why are you making that face at me?”

“Your arm was _snapped in two_ and just _hanging there_ for an entire day!” Ben yells.

Hux blinks at him blankly. “So it was,” he agrees. Shrugs. “I just turned the sensors off. Really, Solo, this is an overreaction.” He turns back around, willing Ben to get on with the data removal.

“What about your other sensors?” Ben asks, trying to sound casual and failing miserably.

The droid sighs. “Visual input is based on light sensors, like you. Hearing is much the same as it always was. Taste and smell are gone, though. I have some particle sensors to detect toxins or what have you, but those don’t register as flavours, just information. None of it matters, really, I can turn sensors on or off as I please.”

Sensing an opportunity, Ben leans forward, voice suddenly very close to the shell of Hux’s ear. “And do droids feel pleasure too?” he whispers. Hux registers a faint burst of warmth along the side of his neck from the breath gusting against it.

“Not like you do,” Hux says imperiously, reaching a hand up blindly to smack Ben in the face and refusing to answer beyond that. Ben keeps his mouth firmly shut after that, lurking around behind Hux with his data extraction. The droid is fairly certain the man is sulking. His revenge comes in the form of a strip of tape to hold the cables down.

Honestly.

 

*

 

At noon Ben finds himself summoned to one of Leia’s meetings. He assumes it must be to do with Hux, since Ben is rarely needed for these things unless it concerns droids or force users. He’s surprised to see Luke waiting patiently in the meeting room when he enters; the Jedi is usually conveniently absent when these meetings are called.

“Couldn’t escape this one, Uncle?” Ben greets him warmly, sitting down in the chair next to him.

Luke chuckles. “Not this time,” he agrees. “I see your father is still away, though. He owes me a round of sabacc, I think he’s avoiding me.”

“Because you always win,” Ben smirks. “You know he hates playing force users.”

The Jedi hums to himself and twiddles his thumbs idly. “I hear you’re going to get a new droid,” Luke says eventually.

“Second hand, technically,” his nephew shrugs.

Luke gives Ben a long, searching look while other officers start filing into the room. He’s never been able to tell when his Uncle is reading his mind, not like he can when Rey does or one of the other padawans try – he knows it’s pointless to try and hide anything from Luke, so he just stares back expectantly.

“You think you’re doing something good, but you’re making things very difficult for yourself in the process,” Luke says. There’s an amused smile playing on his lips. He gives Ben’s leg a comforting pat. “How noble.”  

“Vague as ever, Uncle Luke,” Ben rolls his eyes. He’s never entirely sure just how much Luke ever knows, and he’s fairly certain by now that Luke makes his answers ambiguous on purpose. He wonders just how much he picked up of Hux’s situation, if he knows about the kyber crystal now. At least if this is all a truly terrible idea, Luke would say so, Ben hopes.

“Don’t let yourself be taken advantage of while you’re trying to take advantage of someone else,” Luke says while stroking his greying beard. He’s trying his best to look like a wise old man but his big grin ruins the effect.

Leia enters the room then, so instead of replying aloud Ben thinks as loudly as he can _that’s definitely not a Jedi proverb, you just made that up_.

The meeting drags on endlessly, as they always do. Not because there’s all that much to say, but because one Republic official or other always insists on arguing the most mundane of points. Ben doesn’t know how his mother can stand it. He’s not even sure why they bother, because Leia almost always gets her way anyway.

It’s decided at great length that Hux is going to be wiped as soon as the data extraction is finished. The process will be filmed and broadcast a week later to the Republic, to give them a chance to make use of the information obtained before the news goes public. Leia manages to spin it as some sort of symbolic insult to the First Order that Ben is keeping the droid, which seems to please the Republic officials no end; the eventual hope is that Hux will be able to turn his tactical processing abilities to the Resistance’s favour, though a handful of captains reject this as too risky, wanting the droid to stay as far away from warfare as possible. Ben doesn’t really care.

He gives them a report, when asked, about the data extraction. There’s about ten hours left and they’ll need a larger memory console to put it on, but otherwise Hux will be ready to format in the morning.

“Good,” Leia nods. “Then it will be done tomorrow at 0900. Dismissed.”

Just as he gets up to leave with everyone else, Ben feels a tug from Leia in his mind. He moves over to her, giving her a sloppy salute. “General?”

His mother tuts at him. “Just like Han. Always so smug when you get what you want,” she scoffs. “I want you to see about finding some other clothes for Hux. Something tidy, since we’ll be filming this thing tomorrow. Get rid of that wretched black uniform while you’re at it, I can’t bear to look at it. _Now_ you’re dismissed. Shoo!”

He gives his mother a kiss on the top of her head before he goes just to annoy her.

 

*

 

Ben rustles up some clothes for Hux from his own closet. They’re about the same height, even if Hux is slimmer; they should work well enough, and he doubts very much that anyone else on base is going to want to donate anything. He picks out a black sweater he’s never worn – he tends to avoid wearing anything black, after his vision. It feels too much like tempting fate. He finds some slim-fitting, grey trousers that he’s grown out of to go with it, and takes some standard issue boots from the base’s supply closet when nobody is looking.

Hux looks down with a sigh when he’s presented with these items. “At least it’s black,” he says wistfully when he holds up the sweater. There’s a small silver Resistance crest embroidered onto the upper arm of one of the sleeves, but he doesn’t comment. Ben lets him keep his undershirt and briefs from the First Order, since there’s no point in them going to waste. The trousers and boots fit well enough.

“And what will they do with my uniform?” Hux asks when Ben gathers up his old clothes. He looks longingly at the heavy greatcoat Ben has hooked over one arm. “My coat?”

Ben shrugs. “They’ll probably burn them.”

For the first time since his capture, Hux looks like he might actually cry.

 

*

 

At 10PM the data extraction is still going and Ben is bored out of his mind.

Hux hasn’t spoken for a few hours now. Whether it’s the data extraction making him irritable or it’s the thought of having to pretend to be Ben’s droid from tomorrow, Ben isn’t sure. The sleeves of his old sweater are slightly too long on the droid; Hux’s thin fingers are picking at the edges of it. Ben is sprawled on the floor watching them.

The sound of Hux clearing his throat makes Ben look up.

“Could I…keep one folder?” he asks quietly.

Ben raises an eyebrow. “Depends what’s in it, I guess.” He wonders if Hux is the sort of person to want to keep personal files – holos of his family, home movies, holiday pictures.

“Blueprints,” Hux says, quickly shattering that illusion. He looks down at the shiny toes of his new boots and chews his lip. “For my bodies.”

“You keep saying ‘bodies’, plural,” Ben says, leaning up on his elbows.

Hux shrugs. “There’s only this one now,” he says, poking out his fingers from his sleeves to count them off. “There was the original, that wasn’t very good. The second one was the one that became a bomb. Then they recycled the original for the third one, the skeleton was still okay but the sensory net had to be rebuilt from scratch, and that’s when they added the poison delivery system. The fourth one was a temporary placeholder and five was my design – after I took the blueprints off my father it was much easier to redesign and improve on body three, but I had to recycle parts of it again.”

“And this one?” Ben prompts.

“This is number six, the last one. I managed to get this one built from scratch with better materials when I became General,” he says. “I tried to hide five just in case this one got damaged, but I deleted its coordinates from my memory so that even I couldn’t find it. I have an awful feeling it was in the Hosnian system, it would be in keeping with Snoke’s brand of humour. He did seem a little too delighted when he told me we were firing Starkiller on them.”

“How would you have found it if you’d needed it?”

“I left myself a puzzle with bits of data,” Hux shrugs.

Ben hums, sitting up properly now. “Why do you tell me all this?” he says. “You don’t seem like the type to give this sort of information away willingly.”

“Because it doesn’t matter anymore,” Hux smiles, genuinely, for once – his lips tip up higher on one side than the other, his eyes crinkling at the corners. It makes Ben’s breath catch. “This is the last body now. The blueprints are more sentimental than anything.”

“Not just the bodies, though,” Ben frowns. “The kyber crystal, the experiments, the missions…”

Hux shrugs. “Calculated risk, maybe,” he decides eventually. “So…the folder?”

“Alright,” Ben agrees. “I’ll have to partition a phantom drive onto you to hide them in. They’re going to want to see the data report when I remove everything else tomorrow. I think I can keep it hidden well enough.”

Hux smiles again, and Ben thinks he would probably give the droid anything he wanted in that moment.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We finally reach the memory wipe! Goodbye, First Order Hux.  
> Thank you so much for your feedback so far everybody, I'm so happy you guys are enjoying this story.

Ben wakes up early the next morning to make himself presentable. He probably won’t be caught on camera, but if he is he wants to look his best – he knows he’s not conventionally or effortlessly attractive like his parents once were. He shrugs on his best dark green shirt, layering a waistcoat over it (the one piece of black clothing he does own). Satisfied with his usual grey pants, he gives his hair a onceover before leaving.

Hux has been taken back to the interrogation room when Ben gets there – there’s more space for the cameras and his equipment. The droid is cuffed to the table and is glowering more than usual. In Ben’s old oversized sweater, he doesn’t look particularly threatening anymore.

“Ah, there you are baby,” Leia greets her son warmly as she bustles about the place. She seems to have dressed up for the occasion too, her hair in a more elaborate braid than usual. “Get your equipment set up, we’re nearly ready here.”

Hux turns to give Ben a shit-eating grin when Leia rushes back out the room. “ _Baby_ ,” he repeats maliciously.

“Yeah, yeah, keep it up and I’ll delete your phantom drive too,” Ben growls, just low enough for only Hux to hear. It shuts the droid up nicely.

He leans over to plug the cables back into the nape of Hux’s neck again. “I’m going to power you down when I do the memory wipe,” Ben murmurs quietly, taking his chance to speak while he’s close. “You’ll probably have to do a system reboot when I wake you back up. If the wipe goes wrong I’ll signal you by tying my hair up, in which case just act like it didn’t work – they’re gonna check the data readouts so we need them to be right.”

Hux nods in a short, sharp motion. Ben turns his attentions to the droid’s forearms, rolling up the sleeves to his elbows.

“What’s this for?” Hux frowns, Ben’s fingers starting to feel for the seams of the skin.

“They want it to be obvious that you’re a droid for the camera,” he explains, peeling off the synthetic skin on Hux’s forearms. He leaves everything from the wrist down – hands are too fiddly to put back on if nothing’s broken, too many tiny pieces of skin. Ben smirks up at him. “How’s it feel to look too realistic?”

“Expensive,” Hux grins wickedly, and Ben can’t help but give him a crooked grin back. The sound of footsteps in the hallway outside pulls them out of the moment. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to scowl extra hard for the cameras now. That way it will be easier to pretend to be pleasant later,” Hux sneers quietly towards the door.

Ben looks away quickly as Admiral Ackbar enters the room, putting the synthetic skin alongside the console Hux is connected to. Majors Ematt and Brance trail in soon afterwards, shortly followed by Leia and Admiral Statura. A stream of officers pour in after, and Ben is beginning to wonder how they’re all going to fit in the tiny room. A pair of technicians manage to squeeze past to set up two cameras, one in front of Hux, and one pointed at the cables attached at the nape of his neck.

There’s a ripple of nervous energy in the room, and it’s making Ben twitchy as he double-checks the console in front of him. He’d already triple checked that all of the files were copied off Hux correctly last night, and insisted on checking five times that the phantom drive couldn’t be located.

The Republic officials join Leia to oversee the process.

“Everything ready?” she asks Ben. He nods. Leia clears her throat. “General Hux of the First Order, as previously established, you are to be deleted for crimes against sapients. Any last words?”

Hux just gives her a nasty smile, all teeth.

With that, Leia nods sharply to Ben, who hits delete. Hux jerks as if electrocuted, one long, violent spasm rippling through his body, before he slumps down bonelessly against the table with a heavy thud. The only sound in the room is the overworked whine of his engine as he powers down. Ben’s eyes flick over the readouts in front of him, watching intently as a decade and a half of data is deleted. The officials gathered wait with baited breath; from the corner of his eye Ben can see that Hux looks oddly peaceful lying there on the table, still as death.

“Drives are empty,” Ben swallows. “Back-up memory empty.” Leia nods to give him the go ahead, and he enters the command to reboot Hux.

Nothing happens for a moment. Then, slowly, the former General twitches in his seat. Hux uncurls as if in slow motion to sit up in his chair, looking out blankly in front of him. His eyes flicker and twitch as his processors restart themselves, jaw slack.

“Formatting complete,” he announces tonelessly. The droid sits there silently for a while, the room quiet as they wait. Data scrolls past too quickly to read on the terminal Ben has Hux connected to as the droid runs through his procedures. “System check completed.”

“System report,” Ben responds. He can see it on the console in front of him, but he assumes they’ll want it out loud for the cameras.

“Hardware operating at 96%. Memories A, B and C empty. Data not found on processor 1. Resume normal operations from processor 2?” Hux asks, still and unmoving save for his mouth, so lifelessly that Ben isn’t entirely sure he hasn’t disconnected the droid from his kyber crystal, too.

He moves to stand in front of Hux, frowning down at the droid. “Resume,” he says uncertainly.

Hux slumps slightly in his chair again, closing his eyes and tipping his head forwards. Then he’s blinking them open like he’s just woken up. His eyes land on Ben’s face first and he smiles warmly, entirely unlike either the cold smirk Ben has known for the last two days or like the few genuine smiles he’s managed to pry from the droid.

“Hello,” he greets pleasantly, voice light and airy. “My name is Hux II. What is to be my function?”

A tentative wave of relief passes through the officers gathered. Ben swallows. They expect him to do something here, he’s sure, but this wasn’t something he’d discussed with Hux ahead of time. Hux blinks at him brightly, smile turning a little confused.

“Hello Hux,” Ben clears his throat. “You are a multi-function, data processing companion droid. You will be assisting the Resistance from now on.”

Hux inclines his head slightly in a small bow. “I am pleased to serve you,” he says genuinely. Ben fears he really has deleted the man. Contented murmurs ripple through the crowd, Leia giving Ben an approving pat on the shoulder. The technicians move to turn the cameras off; the Republic has the propaganda it wants from this now.

“Now that that’s done,” Leia says, looking pointedly at the gathered crowd. They begin to file out, allowing Rey, Poe and Finn to enter, who have been trying to watch from the two-way mirror outside. The droid looks up at the trio bemusedly, betraying no recognition.

“Damn,” Finn breathes, “he really is gone.”

“He’s kind of charming when he’s actually smiling, huh?” Poe says.

“Am I to work with you too?” Hux asks politely.

“Yes!” Rey says at the same time as Ben says “ _No_.” He gives her a sour look. “You guys should go ahead,” he says instead of arguing. “I need to do a few more checks here to make sure it actually worked.”

“You do that,” Finn says, tugging the other two out of the room despite their protests. Ben can feel that looking at Hux still makes the ex-stormtrooper uneasy, doubly so with the unfamiliar warmth on the droid’s face now.

Once Ben is sure that the room is empty and everyone is out of earshot, he unhooks the cables from the droid’s neck and turns to Hux with a frown. “ _Actual_ system details.”

The droid snorts at his concern, pleasant smile skewing to one side in a more familiar nasty smirk. Ben bites his tongue to stop himself breathing a sigh of relief. “I gave you the actual system details,” Hux says smugly. Ben raises one eyebrow at him and the droid rolls his eyes petulantly. “Kyber crystal still functional, non-data memories still accessible. Phantom drive contains one folder. Folder contains blueprints parts zero-one through two thousand and forty six.”

“Good,” Ben nods. “What was with the electrocution act?”

“They wanted an execution, so I gave them a show,” Hux slides his eyes to the side awkwardly, “…is what I’d like to say. It wasn’t…entirely an act. A little embarrassing, honestly.”

“It was painful??” Ben asks sharply.

Hux rolls his eyes back towards Ben and gives him an honest-to-stars leer. “Quite the opposite,” he smirks with satisfaction, and Ben goes bright red at the insinuation.

 

*

 

Hux is a frighteningly good actor.

His new persona still stands with the same military precision as before – Ben thinks his skeleton might be built with the express purpose of keeping him that way, honestly – but he folds his arms in front of him now instead of behind. He seems to keep his head inclined slightly at all times, avoiding direct eye contact almost shyly. He looks around every new room he’s in with a childish curiosity, mouth always set in a vague smile.

Ben decides it’s awful and he hates it and he’s figuring out how to let more of the real Hux through into public as soon as he can. He hopes the sickly sweetness of the act wears off soon into something more natural.

He enters his workshop with Hux following dutifully behind him. The droid breathes an obnoxiously loud sigh of relief once Ben locks the door.

“This was a terrible idea,” Hux groans, flopping into Ben’s chair. “How fast do AIs learn these days? When can I have sarcasm, at _least_?”

“I don’t know but _force_ am I going to find out, you’re unbearable,” Ben agrees, fisting his hands in his own hair and leaving it a fluffy mess. “In fact, I’m going to build one right now and we can use that as a marker.” He reaches into his box of spare parts and pulls out the empty BB chassis he’s been tinkering with lately. It would have been BB-22, eventually.

“I name you Hux the third,” he says, holding it aloft.

“You most certainly do not,” Hux says indignantly. “And that _thing’s_ processors aren’t even comparable to mine. It’s practically an R2.”

“How very dare you, the BBs are my precious children and I invented them,” Ben sniffs. “You have approximately ten times the processing power that a BB does, your kyber crystal is doing all the real work. So all I need to do is fit ten of them in here and get them to sync up.” He lifts the top portion of BB-Hux to face him. “Sorry buddy, you’re going to be missing an awful lot of components to make room for this.”  

“Wonderful, now my namesake is a mutant-invalid,” Hux glares down at it.

 

* 

 

Ben works on BB-Hux until night falls.

Hux is surprisingly considerate, keeping quiet while Ben works; the droid spends his time exploring the workshop, only interrupting now and then to ask what something is. Ben’s workshop is a single-room, steel structure, filled with boxes upon boxes of miscellaneous parts – some broken, some intact. One wall is lined with specialist fabrication equipment, while another is taken up entirely by his workbench, tools hung haphazardly on the wall above. Once Hux seems to have memorized every corner of the room, he comes to sit on the edge of Ben’s desk, watching intently as each processor comes together.

“I am reluctantly impressed that you’re making these from scratch,” Hux says after a few hours.

Ben shrugs. “You learn these things out of necessity when you can’t rely on supply routes. I make do.”

He’s about to start on the eighth one when Hux stills his hand. “It’s 21:23 and you haven’t eaten since 12:14,” he says.

“Oh shit, it’s spilling over into this you as well!” Ben gasps with mock horror.

Hux smacks Ben’s head lightly. “If I don’t attempt to take care of you they’ll get suspicious. What was it you called me, a ‘companion droid’? Those things are walking nannies. I should know, I was raised by one.”

Ben grins, but puts down his tools obediently and leads Hux to the canteen.

 

*

 

The Resistance base is unusually quiet. From what Ben can gather by skimming through the thoughts of the remaining personnel, Leia and her officers have already launched some kind of offensive against the First Order with the data Hux provided. The beginnings of a new Starkiller, two sectors of the galaxy over; it’s still early enough in construction that it should be easy to take it down.

As he leads Hux towards his ship, he can see that most of the x-wings are gone. He supposes that means Poe must be part of the mission too, and where Poe goes Rey and Finn will undoubtedly have followed. His own ship is still parked haphazardly at the edge of the airfield, as far from the base as he could manage while still landing it on solid ground.

Ben smacks a panel on the side of it, and with its usual worrying creak the boarding ramp folds down.

“So,” Ben says awkwardly, rubbing a hand to the back of his head, “this is home. It’s not much, but you’re welcome to it.”

He gives Hux a short tour of the ship – the cockpit sits at the front, with a living room just behind it. One wall of the living room is taken up with a sink, a basic storage unit for food and the minimum of necessary cooking supplies, while an old, large couch is screwed down to the floor in the centre of the room, facing a holoscreen on the wall. The space behind the living room has the ship divided in two sections – below, the engine room, splitting off into two sections for the hyperdrive, and on the floor above Ben’s bedroom and refresher. Most of the bedroom is taken up by a queen-size bed, supposedly to accommodate Ben’s ridiculous height, with a trunk of clothes shoved against one wall.

Ben feels like he should apologize somehow for how small the place is – he’d offer Hux a room in the base dorms if it weren’t for the droid act – but when he turns to face Hux, the smaller man only looks faintly lost.

“Is this…okay?” Ben asks cautiously. “You could have the living room if you like. I could put up a divider.”

Hux shakes his head. “That won’t be necessary,” he says quietly, eyes still a little far away. “I can recharge sitting up, the couch will serve just fine.”

“Hey,” Ben says softly, reaching out to grip one of Hux’s shoulders gently, “you’re free now. I meant that. You can do whatever you like when it’s just us. If you want something then just ask, you don’t have to need it.”

Hux meets his eyes finally and gives him a brief nod, but the look on his face makes Ben wonder if the droid even knows what freedom is anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since a few people have asked, I just want to reassure everybody - this isn't going to end like the movie "Ex Machina". I'm neither talented nor sadistic enough to write a psychological thriller like that haha, I just want the idiot children to smooch.

It becomes clear very quickly that Hux doesn’t sleep.

On the first night he spends in Ben’s ship, Ben wakes around 3 in the morning to the sensation of being watched. He rolls over groggily and bumps into Hux, who is sitting on the edge of Ben’s bed and just staring intently at him.

“What,” Ben says flatly, voice still thick with sleep.

Hux neither moves nor speaks. He keeps up his staring contest, but Ben is too tired for this nonsense, his eyes drifting shut again slowly. Naturally, just as he’s about to fall back asleep is when Hux chooses to speak.

“I’m free now,” he says seriously, repeating Ben’s words from before. “I can do anything I like.”

He says it like a statement of fact, but there’s a curious sense of permission seeking about the droid. Ben wonders whether it’s aimed at him, or if Hux is trying to convince himself. He blinks up at Hux. “Yes?”

Hux nods and gets up, as if that settles things.

When Ben wakes up again it’s at 8AM, and he shuffles into the living area to find Hux furiously cleaning. He walks back out and into the room again to make sure this isn’t some kind of fever dream. He’s not even sure where Hux got the cleaning supplies. He definitely doesn’t own the apron the droid is wearing.

“When you woke me up and said you could do anything you like, I didn’t think you wanted to repurpose yourself as a cleaning droid,” Ben says.

Hux scowls up at him. “If I’m going to be forced to spend the foreseeable future cohabiting with you I’m at least going to do it somewhere clean. This place is _filthy_.” He pushes a crumpled up piece of paper in Ben’s face. “Do you know what this is? It’s a receipt for a docking bay from _four years ago_. Have you honestly not cleaned in four years??”

“I’ve cleaned!” Ben protests. Shuffles awkwardly. “Not…thoroughly, I mean...”

“ _That_ is self-evident,” Hux grumbles, throwing down a miserable looking cleaning rag for dramatic effect. 

 

*

 

Hux’s campaign of cleaning terror continues once they reach Ben’s workshop that day. To Ben’s despair, the droid takes it upon himself to sort, organize and catalogue every box of parts littering the room while he continues working on BB-Hux. Hux begins by dividing everything into three piles: broken but fixable, broken beyond repair, and functioning.

Trying his damnedest to ignore the droid, Ben finishes the processors on the new BB unit. When added to the power core they leave no room for any of the propulsion mechanics; it seems BB-Hux is going to be paralyzed from the head down, poor thing.

“It’s finished,” Ben calls as he props it up on the desk, ready to be switched on. “Want to do the honours?”

“Not particularly,” Hux grumbles, instead crossing his arms over his chest and glaring down at his namesake as Ben boots it up. With a pleasant trill, BB-Hux powers on for the first time, twisting its head from side to side to observe its audience. It makes a confused squeak as it tries to move its body, somewhat mystified by its predicament.

“We should make a checklist,” Ben hums down at his pathetic creation. “We can tick confusion off already. Congratulations, you’re allowed to be confused.”

Hux scowls down at the both of them. “Good, because I’m already baffled as to why you keep half of the stuff in this workshop,” he grunts, turning sharply on his heel to continue sorting. Ben gives BB-Hux’s head a comforting pat before pulling out a datapad to begin his checklist. With most of the base out on an offensive, there isn’t much work to do; normally Ben would arrive in the morning to find this or that problem droid waiting at his door to be fixed. The checklist only takes him a few minutes, and then he’s bored enough to help Hux with tidying.

They’re just beginning to start sorting the pile of working pieces by function when Ben feels a familiar presence approaching.

“Start smiling, my mother is coming,” he mutters under his breath, and Hux grimaces before schooling his face into something more pleasant.

Leia enters the room with two cups of tea in hand a few moments later, blinking down at the sight of her son and his droid on their hands and knees rummaging through parts.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Hux smiles with a slight bow, before turning his attention back to the parts on the floor.

“Good grief,” she says, putting the tea down on Ben’s desk, surveying the components littering every corner of the workshop. “What exploded this time?”

“Nothing,” Ben grumbles. “This is tidying, apparently.”

“I’m guessing this was your idea?” Leia raises an eyebrow at Hux.

“Yes ma’am,” Hux agrees. “I wanted to be of use to Master Ben. I will be compiling a thorough inventory of the workshop.”

Leia gives Ben the smug smile of a mother that’s been trying to convince their child to tidy up for thirty years. He rolls his eyes and dusts himself off to take a break with her as Hux continues sorting diligently.

“I see the x-wings are out,” Ben comments lightly as he sips his tea.

His mother looks briefly towards the droid still working on the floor, seemingly reluctant to talk war with Hux around, regardless of the memory wipe. Ben wonders if she suspects anything, or if Luke has talked to her at all (he doubts it. Luke likes to be mysterious, which generally translates to hoarding knowledge to himself). “We can thank our former general for keeping immaculately organized files,” she comments vaguely after a while. “I feared we would be digging through them for months, but it seems I needn’t have worried.”

Ben nods, and they drink their tea in companionable silence.

“Han and Chewie will be home soon,” Leia smiles eventually. “You’d better send him a message today if there’s anything you want him to bring back to base for you, he’s stopping at Yantooine.”

“There’s a few things I’m running low on,” Ben agrees, turning to his desk to start making a list. Leia follows the motion and settles her gaze on BB-Hux, who is still trying to figure out a way to get its lower half to move.

“Another BB?” she frowns.

“Hm? Oh, no, it’s just a prototype,” Ben says distractedly. “Playing with a new processor based on the one Hux has. I want to see how, or if, it will make use of the extra power.”

Leia hums to herself. With one last sip of her tea, she gathers up the empty cups and stands, fixing a considering look at Hux still working on the floor. “It’s nice that you have some company now,” she decides. “I don’t like to think of you hiding away in here all alone. I’m glad. You take care of my boy now, Hux.”

“Yes ma’am,” Hux says, giving her a shallow bow as she leaves.

“Please never call me ‘Master Ben’ again,” Ben mutters once he’s sure she’s out of earshot.

“Gladly.”

 

* 

 

The second night, Ben thinks Hux doesn’t mean to wake him up. He hears the droid padding softly around the room, round and round. He’s considering trying to wake up and tell the droid to knock it off when Hux stops in front of the full-length mirror of Ben’s bedroom.

“I’m free now,” he whispers near silently to his reflection. “I can do anything I like.” Hux repeats this to himself a few times; the soft words lull Ben back to sleep.

On the third night Ben wakes up to Hux being much less careful about not waking him. The droid is rummaging through his clothes trunk and inspecting everything. He briefly thinks Hux might be organizing and folding clothes, attempting to bring his cleaning crusade into Ben’s bedroom (which would be welcome, honestly, he can never find anything in here), when his eye catches on Luke’s old, brown pilot jacket around Hux’s shoulders. He’s left the sleeves empty like he used to with his greatcoat.

“What the fuck,” Ben says, face still half mashed into his pillow. Hux gives him a look as if Ben is interrupting. He stabs a finger in the droid’s direction. “You can’t have that jacket.”

Hux’s response is to make a face at him, throw the jacket down, and then tip everything in the trunk out onto the floor.

“Fucking asshole,” Ben grumbles, but at least Hux has left the room now. That night he dreams of being five years old and trying to make trouble early in the morning, so his mom will wake up and play with him.

Hux doesn’t wake him on the fourth night. He thinks perhaps it’s an apology for tipping the trunk over, because he wakes up the next morning to find everything folded and neatly arranged inside.

 

*

 

On the fifth day, the offensive seems to be wrapping up. One or two x-wings have started trickling back to the base. Ben hopes it means Rey will be home soon; he’s starting to miss his baby cousin. Predictably, Wexley drops off BB-4 with Ben when he arrives, the droid’s head blown clean off this time. Wexley leaves very quickly at the resulting scowl Ben gives him.

With nothing else to have kept them occupied, Ben and Hux have reached the final stage of sorting – dealing with the pile of things broken beyond repair. Everything in the pile needs to be taken apart so it can be recycled, and the two of them take malicious glee in the chance to engage in some harmless destruction. For a former General of the First Order, Ben finds himself getting on surprisingly well with Hux. They fall into an easy friendship with each other, bonding over a shared, morbid sense of humour.

He wonders what Hux would have turned out like if he hadn’t been forced to become a droid. Hux is currently violently stabbing a broken cooling unit with a screwdriver; it makes it difficult to imagine that he ever would have turned out anything like Finn.

“Would you have done it, if you hadn’t been Snoke’s prisoner?” Ben asks suddenly. Hux looks up at him curiously. “Starkiller, I mean. The Hosnian system.”

The droid frowns down at the half-destroyed cooling unit, seeming to search for an answer to that. “I think the better question,” he replies slowly, “is if I would have done it if I was still human.”

“You don’t consider yourself human now?” Ben asks, somewhat sad to have to ask at all. “Even with your kyber crystal?”

“I am quite literally cold and heartless,” Hux smirks, but there’s a self-deprecating edge to it. “You’ve spent a week with me now. You should know I’m not a nice person, Ben. I felt nothing for the Hosnian system when I ordered them to fire, only satisfaction that my Starkiller worked correctly.”

Ben wants to argue, wants to believe that Hux would have felt _some_ guilt if he had still been fully human, but the droid’s expression closes off and declares the conversation over. Hux goes back to his mindless destruction with renewed fervour. 

 

*

 

That night, Ben wakes to the feeling of someone climbing into bed with him.

Still in his black sweater and grey trousers, Hux lets himself in under the bedcovers, pressing himself up against Ben’s back. He pushes his cool face between Ben’s shoulder blades and throws his free arm over his waist.

“This is new,” Ben comments without turning.

“I’m free now,” Hux says irritably. “I can do what I like.”

Ben closes his eyes and settles his head against the pillow, sighing sleepily. He’s certainly not going to complain if this is what Hux wants to do with his freedom. In the quiet of his bedroom, he can feel Hux’s systems vibrating softly where he’s pressed against Ben’s back. It’s soothing; he finds himself drifting off to the sensation.

“ _Ben_ ,” Hux says urgently, startling him back awake.

He hums questioningly.

“I don’t think I remember how to be human,” the droid admits desperately, so quietly Ben almost misses it.

He rolls over clumsily to frown down at Hux. The smaller man doesn’t add anything to his original statement, just stares blankly forwards where he’s level with Ben’s chest.

“What would you have done, if we hadn’t caught you?” Ben prompts gently. Tentatively, he raises a hand to pet at Hux’s hair, unsure if the comforting motion will be permitted. The red hair is smooth and synthetic like the rest of Hux, silky between his long fingers.

“I never really thought about it,” Hux whispers, closing his eyes and allowing the touch. “I wanted…I just wanted so badly to be free of Snoke, of everything, to own myself again. That’s all. I never let myself believe it would actually happen, so I didn’t even think about what would come afterwards.” He laughs softly, humourlessly. “It’s unlike me, right? I used to- I had a plan for everything, before. I don’t even know where I was going when they caught me. Just- as far away as I could.”

Ben lets the confession hang between them for a while, forming his response carefully as he drags his fingers repetitively through Hux’s hair. “To want is to be human,” he says.

Hux snorts. “That doesn’t sound like a Jedi thing to say. I thought you force users were all about that non-attachment, ascetic bantha-shit.”

“Mmm. You may have noticed I’m not a Jedi,” Ben replies, wide mouth tipping up into a smirk. He flicks a finger against Hux’s scalp in a tiny, petty movement of revenge. “You finally got what you wanted after fifteen years, and now you’re lost without that motivating your every action,” he continues, more seriously. “So what do you want now, Hux? What will drive you?”

Hux doesn't reply. It’s clear he doesn’t know.

“Think about it,” Ben says softly, carding his fingers through Hux’s hair again. “You have all the time in the world to think about it.”

“Why _aren’t_ you a Jedi?” Hux asks suspiciously, finally raising his head up to meet Ben’s gaze.

Ben tries to grin at him, but it’s subdued, sad around the edges; the truth still stings, even after all these years. He props himself up onto his elbows to lean over the other man, whispers into his ear, “Because I’m too dangerous.”

He rolls back to lie on his side again, facing away from Hux. He doesn’t really want to allow him this line of questioning – not yet, anyway. The droid lets it go, surprising Ben by pressing his face back between sharp shoulder blades.

He falls asleep to the sound of cooling fans.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled with this chapter a little, I hope it reads okay...  
> Thanks again for all of your kind feedback everybody!

When Ben wakes up, he has about three bleary seconds of the force warning him that _something_ is about to happen before the wind is abruptly knocked out of him.

“I’m _hooome_!” yells Rey, jumping up and down on his bed and sending Ben tumbling off the mattress onto the floor.

“ _Why_ ,” Ben whines miserably, face smooshed against the cool metal tiling. He sits up and looks around his bedroom blearily; Hux appears to have left the bed at some point last night, nowhere to be seen. A vague sense of disappointment settles over him at the thought. Rey is beaming down at him. “What did I ever do to you?”

“Aren’t you going to ask me about the mission?” she grins.

“Unless you’ve somehow acquired yet another boyfriend to add to your collection that needs the fear of the force put into him, I’m not awake enough to care,” Ben decides, stretching his aching limbs. “Speaking of which, where are they? They’re due for some meaningless torture.”

“Be _nice_ ,” Rey chides. Hux chooses that moment to enter the bedroom with a cup of tea. She looks at the droid with the sudden, glorious realization of someone who’s been waiting for a chance at payback for years. “Or I’ll steal your droid’s legs.”

“Here is your tea, Miss Rey. Please don’t touch my legs,” Hux says sweetly. “Good morning, Ben. Will you be having breakfast in the canteen with Miss Rey?”

Rey laughs delightedly. “Isn’t he _great_? It’s like having a butler!”

“Yes, Hux. You, stop using my droid as a butler,” Ben says irritably. “And don’t get used to it, his personality procedures are still reforming. He’ll be an asshole like Threepio soon enough.”

Once Ben is dressed, they head towards the canteen together, Hux politely following them a step behind. The noisy mental chatter of a full base starts to ring in Ben’s ears when they near it; it makes him wish the offensive against the First Order had lasted a little longer.

Everything suddenly goes very silent when he and Hux enter.

 _Oh_ , Ben thinks, blinking at the crowd staring at him and the droid behind Rey. _Everyone’s home_. And from the uneasy miasma of emotions that hit him as he stands in the canteen, they’re none too pleased to see Hux walking about without a leash. Rey coughs loudly and pointedly, glaring out at the crowd in the canteen. They all quickly turn away, but the dampened atmosphere is hard for Ben to overlook. He glances towards Hux, but the droid is ignoring everyone in favour of inspecting the bar of condiments.

Rey tugs on Ben’s sleeve. “Sit down, I’ll get your food,” she says kindly, pushing him towards the table Poe and Finn have reserved for them.

“Welcome home,” Ben says sullenly, sitting down heavily next to Poe. The pilot grunts in response – apparently returning from a mission has left him more of a zombie this morning than usual. It’s quite possible the next noise he makes is actually a snore. Ben pushes Poe’s coffee away automatically.

Finn looks warily at Hux, who sits down next to Ben and pulls a pilfered packet of sauce out of his pocket. He points at one of Finn’s empty plates. “Excuse me sir, may I have that?” he asks politely.

“Take it and please, stars, never call me sir again,” Finn responds with horror, pushing the plate towards the droid. Hux proceeds to open the sauce packet and start drawing random patterns on the plate. Ben would tell him to knock it off, but the face Finn is making is far too priceless – he suddenly realizes that there’s a whole new world of opportunities to make the younger man uncomfortable now that he has Hux in tow.

“What’s this?” Rey asks Hux, passing Ben his breakfast tray. Hux is making symmetrical patterns on the plate in front of him

“Ben has encouraged me to express myself,” Hux says, concentrating on the precise lines of sauce. Ben has done nothing of the sort and is fairly certain Hux is just being a little shit. The stares of the staff gathered in the canteen are weighing on him like a physical presence in the force – he wonders if perhaps Hux is trying to distract himself from them too. Swirling a spoon around absently in his porridge, Ben finds himself feeling distinctly queasy.

“I think I’m going to eat in the workshop,” he announces quietly. “Hux, stop wasting sauce.”

Rey gives Ben a worried look, but he’s out of the room before she can protest.

 

* 

 

BB-Hux appears to be working through the stages of grief. The pathetic droid is currently stuck on denial, trilling at Ben every few minutes to find out when his body will move. It’s kind of heartbreaking, honestly. He considers lying to the droid and telling him soon, but he’s interested to see if BB-Hux will follow through with anger.

Despite shutting himself away in his workshop with Hux, the noise of everyone back on base is beginning to give Ben a headache. The sensation of being talked about keeps crawling up his spine and making him shudder. It’s distracting enough that he fails to hear the whine of a familiar engine landing out in the airfield.

Han and Chewbacca burst into the workshop and Ben almost jumps out of skin, thanking the force that he and Hux have been trying to coax BB-4 back to life in companionable silence. He’s not sure _what_ he would have done if his father had walked in on Hux acting like himself. The droid seems to throw a genuinely surprised look towards the pair making their way inside before settling on polite confusion.

Han looks like he’s about to greet Ben, arms open for a hug, but his face falls when it lands on Hux.

“Ben, _no_ ,” he groans loudly. Chewbacca makes a wary garble of agreement.

“Yeah, I missed you too, Dad,” Ben scoffs with annoyance. He stands, childishly making a point of giving Chewie a hug first before turning to his father. Han grumbles into Ben’s shoulder but nevertheless squeezes him tight.

His father narrows his eyes at Hux. “Could you…give us a moment? Alone?” Han says pointedly to the droid.

“Certainly, Master Solo,” Hux stands, giving the older man a bow. He betrays no reaction to Han’s bitter tone. “I will see about collecting Ben’s lunch from the canteen.”

As soon as Hux has left the room, Han smacks his son on the head.

“Ow! Dad, what the-“

“Does Leia know about this? _Tell_ me she knows about this,” Han scowls up at Ben. “I’m not sticking around for the fallout if she doesn’t.”

“Mom approved it,” Ben says sulkily. “He’s an incredibly advanced droid and I wiped his memory clean, it’s fine. Even the Republic is happy.”

Han crosses his arms and considers his son for a long moment. “For the record, I think this is a terrible idea,” he says eventually, poking Ben in the chest with a finger. Ben tries to protest. “Ah-ah! You shut up now and listen, kid. Not because it’s a First Order droid that you may or may not have managed to reset – and don’t think I trust those sneaky bastards for a moment, I’m not convinced this isn’t some kind of trap you’ve fallen into – but because I know people, and they’re going to think the worst of you seeing that asshole following you around, amnesiac or not.”

Ever the mother figure in these situations, Chewbacca warbles sadly in agreement, moving to gather Ben into his arms. He gives him what is supposed to be a comforting pat on the head, but with his big, heavy hands it’s mostly just painful.

“ _Dad_ ,” Ben sighs against the fur he’s squashed up against, “I already know that. It’s already started, I can- _hear_ them.” Han rolls his eyes to the ceiling and throws his hands up. “No, stop, now _you_ listen,” Ben snaps, pulling himself free of Chewie’s grip. “I’m- I’m not charismatic or charming like you and Mom, okay? And I could _always_ hear what they’ve said about me. It’s hard to make friends with people when you can hear them thinking very loudly about your big nose. I’m _lonely_. And Hux is- I can’t hear him at all. He’s a blank slate inside and out, and I really need that. So just- let me have this. Please.”

Han screws up his face. “Fine, but don’t you think I approve,” he grumbles. “Now come here and give your old man a proper hug.”

With that settled, they let the subject drop. Han presents Ben with a bag of the things he requested from Yantooine – his favourite Kashyyyk candy, a new supply of tea leaves grown on Naboo, some boxes of screws and joints that he’s always running out of. Han and Chewie regale him with tales of their latest smuggling trip, where apparently the poor wookie was arrested on Coruscant after being mistaken for a local gang leader. Ben’s father reluctantly had to go on a wild goose chase trying to bring the actual gang leader to justice in order to prove that they weren’t the same wookie.

They’ve been talking for almost an hour when it dawns on Ben that Hux hasn’t returned yet. He’s about to excuse himself to go in search of the droid when Hux returns, lunch tray in hand.

“Here you are, Ben,” he says pleasantly.

He’s wearing one of Ben’s blue shirts, the black sweater nowhere to be seen.

Ben gives Hux an odd look as the droid moves back to where BB-4 is still in pieces, calmly continuing his work to buff out the dents in the BB unit’s chassis, but there’s an odd stiffness to his movements, banging the metal just a little too hard to be necessary.

Ever oblivious to these things, Han doesn’t seem to notice anything, while Chewie looks longingly at the lunch tray in Ben’s hands.

“I think this one is getting hungry,” Han chuckles, elbowing the wookie light-heartedly. “We better go eat and leave you to your work.”

“Oh, sure,” Ben says, standing to walk them to the door. “Thanks again for the stuff from Yantooine, Dad.”

He watches the two turn the corner outside towards the canteen before locking the door closed behind him and rounding on Hux.

“What happened?” he demands.

The droid scowls at him, lip curling. “Two of your Resistance members decided to ‘accidentally’ spill their juice on me in the canteen,” Hux grits out, fingers wiggling to form air quotes. “I had to go back to the ship to get changed.”

Ben tries to squash down the coil of protective fury growing in his chest. “What did you do when they did it?”

“I smiled and told them accidents happen, not to worry,” Hux scoffs, hammering out a dent with determined violence now. He falters a little, slumping pathetically. “I don’t suppose you could wash the sweater for me with your laundry later? I rather prefer to be dressed in black. That thing was growing on me.”

“Of course,” Ben agrees quickly. He rests a hand on Hux’s shoulder comfortingly, unsure what to do- he can’t exactly hunt down the people who did it. “I’m sorry about what happened. It…might be better if I keep you with me instead, for a few days at least. I won’t make you collect food again.”

Hux says nothing.

 

*

 

The broadcast of Hux’s memory wipe finally airs.

Ben had hoped that the mood towards him and the droid would lighten afterwards, but instead it only seems to get worse. The recording has been seen by almost every person on base now, and everyone seems to have an opinion.

They grit their teeth through the next few days. The nicer Hux has to pretend to be in the face of hostility, the more sullen he seems when they’re alone. Ben supposes that, as a former General, Hux isn’t used to being so powerless. He feels oddly guilty for the situation the droid is in, as if it’s Ben’s fault. But the alternative was a genuine execution, and Hux _had_ wiped out the entire Hosnian system with the press of a button…he tries to remind himself that Hux is already getting off far too easy compared to the enormity of his crimes, regardless of what Snoke may have turned him into.

Still, he gifts Hux with a datapad of his own to keep the man occupied; it seems to appease the droid a little, now that he can at least entertain himself with the holonet.

 

*

 

Neither Rey nor her boyfriends are in the canteen when Ben enters that evening, Hux following dutifully behind him. He has his usual placid expression plastered on, blue eyes cast down slightly to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze.

Without Rey’s sunny personality to act as a buffer, Ben feels uneasy in the room with Hux in tow. There are low murmurs, both internal and spoken out loud, as pilots, technicians and kitchen staff peer at him from the corner of their eyes. He hears more than a few whispers of _droidfucker_ aimed his way, and he turns abruptly to glare out at them, daring them to say it out loud. They quickly look away and turn back to their food.

If Hux notices anything amiss, he’s wise enough not to show it. Ben picks an empty table, the red-haired droid sitting beside him obediently. Not that Ben is particularly hungry anymore – the malicious swirl of thoughts in the canteen is making him nauseous. There’s a group of people at the other end of the room full of ill intent, and he’s fairly certain he catches some plan involving kidnapping Hux and churning him up in a ship’s engine. Wonderful, Ben thinks irritably. Hux is going to be pissed when Ben refuses to let him out of sight for the next few weeks.

Then a passing pilot purposely bumps hard against him, hissing “droidfucker” under his breath, and Ben’s patience snaps.

There’s a deafening crack as the table he and Hux are at suddenly breaks in two. Everyone in the canteen is staring now; Hux, who certainly heard the pilot at this range, is looking at the man with wide eyes and a curled, sneering lip, completely ignoring the table Ben has just accidentally snapped with the force. Ben has just enough concentration left to reach out with it again to keep Hux’s mouth firmly shut.

“Don’t,” he hisses softly at Hux.

Thankfully, the droid seems to understand, face softening into a gently concerned frown, rather than the icy fury that was threatening to spill over a moment ago. Ben releases the pressure around Hux’s jaw. He tries to stand up and leave calmly, but the tray of food in his hands crumples into a miserable plastic ball. _Control yourself_ , Ben chides, sucking in a breath between his teeth before he drops the thing with the rest of the broken table and turns on his heel to leave.

Hux follows a little behind him, falsely deferential, and remains silent until they reach Ben’s ship.

“What the fuck,” Hux snaps once the door is shut behind them.

Ben ignores him and stalks into the bedroom, seeming to look around for something.

“Ben, what the _fuck_ was that?” Hux tries again, placing himself bodily in front of Ben to stop the other man. He finds himself stepping back a little at the twitching of one dark, brown eye filled with barely contained rage.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ben says darkly, eyes settling on a point behind Hux’s shoulder.

“You just let them talk to you like that?!” the droid yells.

“This isn’t the First Order, they can say whatever they damn like!!” Ben roars back. “What am I supposed to do, Hux?! And _you_! You can’t react like that!”

“ _I_ can’t react like that? You snapped a table clean in two!!” Hux shouts.

Ben closes his eyes and takes a deep, shaky breath in through his nose. He feels like he’s about to hit something and Hux won’t get out of the firing line.

“Hux,” he says slowly, attempting to even out his tone, “I need to go and talk to Rey. Alone. And I need _you_ to hide,” Ben points at his clothes trunk up against the wall “in there.”

“ _Excuse me?_ ” Hux spits disbelievingly. “I’m not a- a fucking _toy_ you can put back in its box when you’re done with it, you-“

“There were five men in that canteen planning to throw you into a jet engine and film you being ripped to shreds,” Ben snaps coldly, drawing himself up to tower his extra few inches over Hux. “Get in the trunk.” Hux backs up again, lip curling with disgust. Ben rubs his hands over his eyes, rage draining out of him. “I would…rather not come back here after I talk to Rey to find you in chunks. Please. I’ll only be two hours or so.”

Hux narrows his eyes and gives Ben a searching look. “…One hour,” he says eventually, screwing up his face petulantly. Ben can’t find it in himself to argue beyond that, so he relents with a heavy nod.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright so, I really need to be studying for finals instead of writing fanfiction orz I've almost finished writing this story, expect the next few chapters to be updated in quick succession. I need to get this out of my system fast so I can concentrate again lol
> 
> WARNING: there is one instance of self-harm in this chapter, but it's an isolated incident. I've added an end note if you want to know what happens ahead of time.

Around the time that Rey’s little threesome started, just after the ex-stormtrooper arrived at the Resistance base, Ben’s favourite petty revenge on Poe and Finn for defiling his innocent, baby cousin was to march into their bedroom just before things got too heated. Poe finally got so fed up of Ben’s cockblocking that he declared they would continue even with Rey’s cousin still in the room. Things quickly came to an awkward end for everybody when Ben walked in on a very naked threesome sandwich involving Finn being fucked by Poe while Rey gave him a blowjob.

They all agreed to never speak of it again.

Which is why, with both Poe and Finn’s heads between her legs, Rey is so surprised to suddenly realize she has about five seconds to cover them all up before Ben is going to burst into the room.

With a startled squeak she pulls the covers over everybody with the force, accidentally kicking Poe in the head and squishing Finn’s face between her thighs a second before her cousin does indeed slam the door open.

She pokes her head out from the covers just enough to yell, “BEN! Just because _you_ are not getting laid does _not_ mean you can-“

“Shit!! Sorry, I didn’t- Fuck! Sorry!” Ben actually covers his eyes and seems just as surprised as she is, backing out the room as quickly as he entered. Poe and Finn emerge from the covers with a horrified look towards Ben’s retreating form.

“Rey I think your cousin is broken,” Finn says.

“He apologized, what the fuck,” Poe agrees.

Rey groans loudly, flopping her head back on the pillows irritably. She waves a lazy hand towards the door to slam it shut again.

“You two stay put, I’ll go see what he wants,” she grumbles, swinging her legs out of bed to put a robe on. “Don’t finish without me. I swear, this better be important…”

She walks out into the hallway and into the overwhelming feeling of wanting to dig a hole, crawl in it and die coming from Ben, who is sitting hunched against the wall in a traumatized ball.

“Damn right, you _should_ be embarrassed,” she sniffs, crossing her arms together. “Tonight was my turn to be the centre of attention.”

“It can wait until you’re finished,” Ben mutters, looking like he might gag as he says it.

Rey sighs and slides down the wall to sit next to him. “No, it’s gotta be pretty important for you to not pick up on what was happening in there. I wasn’t exactly hiding my thoughts.” She elbows Ben in the side and looks smug. Ben snorts, but only hunches down further into his knees. “So? What's up?” Rey prompts.

“Just…just look,” he mumbles, and Rey feels his mind opening up to her.

Reluctantly, she lets herself in – Ben’s head is never the happiest place to be, and she always seems to snag on some embarrassing memory that neither of them want her to know about when she’s there. She tries to concentrate on whatever it is Ben wants to show her, pushing past the feeling of bone-deep embarrassment to the thoughts below.

Hux and a kyber crystal. The faithful droid routine. The noise of all the staff on base lately, the whispers and the gossip. The pilot in the canteen. The table snapped in two…Hux in a box??

“So…why do you have your pretend droid locked in a trunk, exactly?” she asks once she surfaces back to her own mind.

“Really? _That’s_ your question?” Ben says disbelievingly.

Rey punches him very hard in the shoulder, nearly knocking her cousin over onto his side. “That’s for the rest of it,” she says menacingly. Then, softening, “But that stuff isn’t what you came to talk about.”

Ben laughs softly. “I don’t really know _what_ I came to you to talk about. It’s all just,” he gestures vaguely, “fucked up.”

Rey hums to herself, trying to decipher Ben’s thoughts. “I think you’re more upset that Hux heard the pilot call you that than anything,” she decides. “He wanted you to defend yourself, I think. You won’t, because it’s true, but you don’t want Hux to know that, either. Am I right?”

Her cousin groans, hiding his face between his knees. She’s fairly confident this is Ben’s way of saying she’s right without admitting it out loud. She gives him a gentle nudge with her own knee.

“I think he already knows you like him, Ben,” she says lightly. “You give him the big brown puppy eyes like, _all_ the time.”

“Pretty sure he doesn’t like me now,” comes Ben’s muffled voice from between his knees.

“Well I’d be pretty pissed if you shut me in a trunk instead of talking to me too. And I’m supposed to be the kid sister in this situation…” Rey snorts. She leans her head against Ben comfortingly. “If…if that stuff he told you is true, about all the…the being put in a kyber crystal thing, I don’t think I’d like anybody either. Give it time, Benji, you’ll grow on him.”

 

*

 

Understandably, Hux looks furious when Ben opens the trunk back up. He’s managed to locate Luke’s old pilot jacket from the pile of clothes he’s half submerged in and has put it around his shoulders again.

“You’re giving me this jacket,” he declares, pointing an accusing finger in Ben’s face. “Or I will never forgive you for locking me in a box.”

Ben can’t help but give Hux a tired smile at that. “Fine. Just put your damn arms in the sleeves,” he huffs lightly.

Hux remains lying in the trunk for a moment, staring up at the ceiling of Ben’s ship with his jaw set tight. “Do you know what the worst part of this is?” he asks suddenly. “You were right.”

“About?” Ben frowns at him, leaning his elbows on the edge of the trunk and kneeling down next to it.

The droid scrunches up his face, avoiding Ben’s eyes. “…Someone came in while you were gone. A man, I think. He told someone I wasn’t here over a radio. I’m not going to thank you for hiding me in a trunk, but. You weren’t wrong either.”

At any other time this would probably be cause for another of his famous tantrums, but the news only makes Ben slump down further with despair. A wave of exhaustion hits him and he screws his eyes shut, sighing so deeply he feels it rattling through his lungs.

The feeling of cool fingers carding through his hair snaps his eyes open again.

Hux is sitting up now, giving Ben an odd look as he pushes dark strands of hair away from Ben’s tired face. “Are we going to talk about earlier?”

“If I say no, I don’t think that’s going to stop you from trying anyway,” Ben says, relaxing into the feeling as Hux, bizarrely, continues to pet at his hair.

“It’s not like I had anything else to think about in here,” he sniffs indignantly, and why is Hux still in the trunk anyway? He pushes at Ben’s head so they’re forced to look each other in the eye. “Being called a droidfucker upsets you because it’s true. You do prefer droids.”

Ben scowls, but makes no move to pull away from Hux’s hands.

“It’s not…” Hux hesitates, “the _worst_ thing, to be interested in,” he says slowly. “Pretty harmless, as things go. You shouldn’t let it get to you.”

“Are you only saying that because you’re a droid?” Ben arches one eyebrow, letting his scowl drop.

Hux tugs his hair painfully. “I could make some very accurate guesses as to your ulterior motives for keeping me around right now,” he hisses. His grip relaxes. “But. You’ve been good to me, so far…so I won’t.” He frowns and chews his lip. “It’s true, though. Harmless,” he repeats.

Ben closes his eyes again miserably.

“…I could hack into all of their personal consoles, if you like,” Hux says lightly. “Dig up some dirt for you to throw back at them. Did you know 43% of all pornography is interspecies? Twi’leks are the most popular, but there’s a good 5% involving Hutts.”

“ _Why_ do you know that?” Ben tilts his head up at Hux, aghast.

“I was the General on a ship of over 80,000 people and I was connected to its mainframe at all times,” the droid says bluntly. “I knew much more about my men than I ever, ever wanted to.”

With that, Hux gives Ben’s head a perfunctory pat, and then he raises himself up out of the trunk to admire his new jacket in the mirror.

 

*

 

It’s a small mercy that Hux lacks most of his sense of smell now, Ben thinks, because he’s been hiding in his workshop for three straight days since the incident in the canteen. Unsurprisingly, breaking a table in half has only fuelled the fires of the rumour mill, and the constant muttering of thoughts gets ever louder as the days tick by. Finn has, reluctantly, been bringing his meals to the workshop; he refuses to let Hux collect them, convinced the droid will be lynched the moment he leaves his sight.

From what he can gather, Hux has been passing his time imprisoned in the workshop by trying to turn two of the BB units in for maintenance against each other. Now BB-3 is hiding under a workbench with his lighter held out threateningly, glaring out from behind occasionally while BB-5 hurls high-pitched insults from the other side of the room (BB-Hux is locked in a cage; it appears to have moved on to fury and has turned into a spitting, angry monster, much like its namesake. It is not helping matters between 3 and 5). Ben can’t particularly bring himself to care.

Ben can’t bring himself to do much at all, lately, other than cradling his head in his hands and desperately trying to block out the white noise of all the minds on base. They keep gossiping about him and Hux, and he can hear everything, constant and unrelenting. The seldom-whispered curse _droidfucker_ hisses into his mind with alarming frequency now; they sneer amongst themselves about General Organa’s traitor son with his First Order droid. They want Hux melted down, Ben’s reputation burning up with him. He can’t think, can’t concentrate, can’t hear his own voice among everyone else’s, can’t, can’t, can’t-

With a wordless roar, Ben smashes his head hard against the wall of his workshop.

“ _Stars above,_ Ben!!” Hux yells. Ben is dizzy enough that Hux easily drags him down to sit on the floor. “What the fuck!”

The droid’s face is swimming back into view. Ben tries to focus on the pale eyes in front of him, still too dazed to see them clearly. “I can hear them,” he mumbles miserably, “always, they’re always- they never _stop_ , Hux, they’re so _loud_ -“

“Shit, it’s bleeding,” Hux huffs irritably. “Who are you hearing? What’s so loud?”

“ _Everyone_ ,” Ben hisses as Hux presses a cloth to his forehead to stem the bleeding. “I can hear their…all of their thoughts, their minds, their emotions. The force. All the time.”

“And today is…worse?” Hux asks uncertainly.

“They keep talking about me. You. I can hear them whispering. Ever since…”

“Since you wiped my data,” Hux finishes for him.

Ben leans forward miserably, resting the top of his head against Hux’s chest. “I just want- just _quiet_ ,” he chokes out. Hux makes no move to push him away, but he keeps the cloth pressed to Ben’s forehead. Possibly to stop Ben from getting blood all over his sweater.

Hux sighs, reaching a hand up to tentatively rest it on Ben’s shaggy hair. “How am I going to explain this to your mother?” he mutters to himself. “She’s going to think I did this to you, so, thanks for that. I’m sure she already suspects I’m not as clean as you claimed.”

Ben can feel the vibrations from Hux’s cooling fans against his face. Why are they on? “Can feel your systems like this,” he murmurs, pressing himself closer. He sighs. “It’s nice.”

The droid snorts down at him.

“Not going to push me off?” Ben smiles lazily into his sweater.

Hux shifts uncomfortably at the feeling. “If it…helps you,” he grits out. “With the…the hearing things.” He moves his arms down to prop Ben up against him.

“You’re so quiet,” Ben sighs, melting bonelessly into the hold. “I can’t hear your mind, or your crystal. Even your engine runs so quietly.”

“Then concentrate on that,” Hux grumbles. “Until you’re quiet too.”

They stay like that for what feels to Ben like hours, but is likely only a few minutes since Ben starts to pass out against Hux, at which point the droid starts shaking him and yelling something about concussions.

 

*

 

He wakes up in the med-bay.

Hux is sitting dutifully beside him, staring down at him with concern. Whether it’s real or part of his faithful droid act, Ben doesn’t know. His head feels like it did that time one of the BB units fell out of a cupboard and right onto him. With a groan, he tries to lift himself up onto his elbows, but Hux’s hand darts out to push him back down.

“Stay down. You gave yourself a concussion,” he says gently. Hux stands to do something on the other side of the room before returning to the side of the bed. Then Leia is suddenly bursting in to the room – he guesses Hux must have notified her that he’s awake.

“ _Ben_ ,” she sighs, leaning down next to the bed. “Hux told me what you said to him. You _know_ you could have gone to Luke about this.” She smoothes a hand over his bruised forehead, brushing back dark hair. Bacta has already taken care of the worst of the damage.

Ben blinks at her sleepily, leaning into the touch. He thinks they might have given him something for his headache; his thoughts feel slow and muddy. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Couldn’t think so well.”

Leia presses her lips together in a grim line. “I think it might be good for you to get away from the base for a while,” she says gently. “You haven’t gone on your holiday yet this year. You’re always happier when you get back, sweetheart, why don’t you take a week off?”

It’s a good thing he’s too bleary to think straight, because otherwise he’d probably blush at the thought of his yearly excursions to Malal’s establishment. He’s managed to hide it from his mother this long; she certainly doesn’t need to know now.

“And while you’re gone,” Leia continues, looking up pointedly at Hux, “I think you’d better find some replacement parts for your droid.”

Hux tilts his head curiously, a picture of confused innocence. “Ma’am?”

“You remind everyone here too much of the First Order,” Leia sighs. She looks back down at Ben. “I think it would be prudent if you swapped out some of his facial features. A different hair colour, maybe.”

Ben shakes his head slowly as the words sink in. “Expensive,” he says. “Too expensive.”

Leia smirks down at him, giving him a sharp tap to his nose. “And when has that ever stopped you or your father before?”

“Now my own sweet mother is condoning theft…I must really be out of it…” he laughs softly, letting his eyes close and sleep take him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: there is one instance of self-harm in this chapter, where Ben smashes his head against a wall on purpose out of frustration with all the voices and thoughts he can hear.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am just turning Hux into precious child Domhnall Gleeson...  
> I've been writing this story all in one long word document, it's hard to know where to cut it off for each chapter. Oh well, this works.

Hux seems genuinely surprised to have been let off the base to accompany Ben. He presses himself up against the windows of Ben’s tiny ship once they break atmo, melting with a sigh of relief against them. It’s only been three weeks since his capture, but it feels like months away from the stars.

“So,” Ben says, flipping a switch to put them in aimless auto-pilot for a moment, “where do you want to go?”

The droid turns and frowns at him. “You didn’t have somewhere in mind?”

Ben shrugs. “There’s a planet I can get your parts from that’s about ten hours away at light-speed,” he says. “We’ll have to do that first, I don’t think you should be leaving the ship with that face. Other than that…” he shrugs again.

Hux sits down in the co-pilot’s seat. “I would quite like to keep my face, you know,” he says quietly. Then, even smaller, “It was based on my real one.”

Ben drums his fingers along the control panel and hums thoughtfully. “Well,” he says, leaning forward and bringing up a holonet search on his datapad, “we’ve got ten hours. Here is,” he loads a new page, “the shop catalogue. You pick something you can deal with.”

He drops his datapad unceremoniously into Hux’s lap, concentrating instead on entering the coordinates to their destination and coaxing the ship’s engines to life. The catalogue is illustrated; Hux scrolls through his options before reaching the rather more unsavoury components, at which point he wishes it wasn’t. It’s a catalogue for high-end pleasure droid parts, rather than prosthetics, but it’s the best Ben can do in the circumstances, Hux supposes. There’s a fascinating array of options in the catalogue – every scalp piece comes in every size, hair style, colour and length. And he never even knew he had the option of pretending to be a half human, half Twi’lek hybrid (not that he finds the thought particularly appealing).

“Thank you,” Hux says as he scrolls through, truly meaning it for once. “Really.”

Ben blushes and shrugs with one shoulder, hyperdrive propelling them to light-speed.

 

*

 

By the time they arrive, Hux has made a little shopping list of part numbers for Ben. He refuses to say what any of them are for and won’t give the datapad back so Ben can check.

“How am I supposed to know if I get the right thing?” Ben whines at him, docking the ship a little awkwardly. He’s still not much good at parking.

“If it has the right part number on it, then it’s the right thing,” Hux rolls his eyes.

“Well if I end up coming back here with…with purple hair or something it’ll be your own fault,” he grumbles. “I’m not exactly planning to pay for any of this, I can’t exchange it.”

Hux hums, continuing to read news articles on the datapad. “Do your best,” he calls pleasantly, ignoring Ben as he stomps out the ship.

Like most of the planets this side of the galaxy, Yantooine is dusty and inhospitable. The market here, however, is one of a kind, and one Han frequently took Ben with him to on their travels. According to Ben’s father, if you couldn’t get what you were looking for here, it didn’t exist in the first place. They used to challenge each other to find increasingly bizarre items, and almost always found them for sale.

It takes Ben a while to navigate the miles upon miles of shops and stalls, laid out in neat little blocks. Helpfully, they’re all grouped together by the type of merchandise they carry, so he knows he’s in the right place when he stumbles upon a row of brothel supply shops selling everything from disposable sheets to workers themselves. He keeps his head down, pulling his cloak further over himself, and is relieved to see the shop he came for a few doors over.

The air is cooler inside, thankfully, and it seems empty save for a bored looking creature slumped over the counter. Ben lets his mind flick towards it, searching for something to help him- ah, there. The furry little thing is nocturnal, and the day shifts are wearing it thin.

“You look tired,” Ben says gently, compulsion dripping through each word, “why don’t you take a nap?”

The creature gives him a drowsy nod, shuffling backwards to lay down on the floor behind the counter. Ben watches for a while as it curls into a ball, and then, eventually, lets out slow, even, snuffling breaths, fast asleep. That done, Ben looks around for security droids, but none seem forthcoming and nothing in the force warns of danger. He pulls out the list Hux gave him and looks around.

Nothing is arranged by part number. In fact, he’s not even certain that there’s any rhyme or reason to the way things are arranged at all. Wonderful. This is going to take forever.

He finds a shelf full of scalps and assumes Hux will want at least one of them. Memorizing the part numbers, he starts to dig through them, trying to guess which colour and hairstyle he’ll be taking with him. He’s sorely tempted to just pick something for the droid and be done with it, when he finally stumbles on the part number at the top of the list, and comes back with…

…red hair. What part of ‘disguise’ did Hux not get?

He double-checks it. At least it’s a different style, longer than Hux’s current look, and the colour is less orange and a little more red. Ben feels like he should have guessed that Hux wouldn’t want to stray too far from his original design.

Three hours and a scuffle to get the shopkeeper to stay asleep later, Ben finally has all the items on the list. There’s a pair of matching eyebrows and eyelashes for the hair, some new synth-skin pieces for Hux’s face, and two bottles, of what Ben isn’t sure: possibly engine oil or something for the power core. He picks up a few things that Hux might break and need replacing while he’s there – a roll of uncut synth-skin, just in case, extra finger joints, earlobes. Then he steps neatly over the unconscious shopkeeper, and leaves.

He’s halfway back to the ship when he realizes the extra items he took are all things Malal’s droids usually need to have replaced. Ben swears, loudly.

 

*

 

“Here,” Ben says, dropping the bag of Hux’s requests on the couch. He hurries past him to hide the bag of spare parts under his bed; he doesn’t feel like being subjected to the droid’s judgement right now.

When he gets back to the living area of the ship Hux is digging through the bag like a four year old opening its presents on life day, a delighted grin on his face. He suddenly sits up and stabs a finger in Ben’s direction.

“I’m going to go put these on and you’re not allowed to look,” he announces childishly, standing abruptly to dart into the bedroom.

Ben snorts. “Yeah, you’re welcome,” he grumbles, shuffling towards the cockpit to take them off planet. He’d rather not stay any longer than they have to, that creature in the shop will be waking up any moment now. He eases the ship out of the atmosphere and sets a path for the hyperdrive to jump into. They still don’t have a destination in mind so he picks a planet in the Outer Rim he’s been to a few times before for now, a tiny thing with large, clear lakes he likes to fish in.

Once the ship makes it to lightspeed, he heads back into the empty living room. Ben can hear Hux still padding about the bedroom. He flops down onto the couch and turns the holoscreen on. The droid is taking a suspiciously long time to change his components, but Ben elects to leave him be, instead getting distracted by a news broadcast from one of the core planets. The First Order has been suffering huge numbers of defectors since Hux’s memory wipe was broadcast, it seems.

Cool hands suddenly come from behind him to cover his eyes. “Close your eyes,” Hux says. Ben can hear the smile in his voice, so he huffs and closes them.

He hears Hux step around the couch to stand in front of them. “ _Now_ open.”

Ben blinks up at the droid and his breath catches. Hux looks- well. It’s the same face structure underneath, but it’s like looking at another person entirely. His new hair parts on the opposite side, coming down to just below his ears, redder than before and making his skin seem that much paler. He has a _beard_ , of all things, short but a little scruffy – Ben didn’t realize the jaw-piece he picked up included that. The other face-piece is more subtle, a new scattering of faint freckles that stretch over his nose. Hux grins down almost shyly as Ben takes it all in.

“You look…” Ben swallows, “so different.”

“I’ve never had a beard before,” Hux’s smile widens, more confident now. He reaches up to run his fingers along his jaw, seemingly fascinated by the new sensation. “I was too young to grow one when they changed me. I wanted to try it.”

“Good,” Ben exhales softly. “It’s good that…you want things.”

Hux gives him an odd look, chewing at his bottom lip while he smiles. “There are other things I want, too,” he says. The droid moves to sit next to Ben on the couch, much too close.

Ben’s heart stills in his ribcage. “Yeah?” he breathes.

“You look at me so adoringly,” Hux laughs softly. He leans in closer, whispering, so near that Ben can feel the soft whiskers of Hux’s new beard tickle his chin. “Don’t you know I’ve killed millions?”

And then finally, finally- Hux closes the gap between their lips.

But at the first brush of contact between them the droid suddenly jolts, a full-body flinch, and if he had any blood Ben is sure it would drain completely from his face. With a look of horror Hux suddenly launches himself away from the couch, slapping a hand over his mouth and rushing into the bedroom. Ben hears the door to the refresher slamming shut.

All Ben can do is blink at the empty space where Hux used to be, with absolutely no idea what just happened.

 

*

 

Ben knocks gently on the door to the refresher.

“Hux?” he calls softly. Hux has been there for almost ten minutes now. He can’t hear the droid moving around – for possibly the first time in his life, Ben regrets not being able to hear the mind of the man in the other room. He closes his eyes and frowns in concentration, trying to get a read on what Hux is doing in there. People usually seem to subconsciously narrate their actions as they do them, it’s much more difficult without being able to hear Hux’s thoughts. He can vaguely feel the overworked thrumming of Hux’s cooling fans, the blades stuttering with panic; he can feel the joints in Hux’s hands working frantically, pulling, peeling, scraping.  

“ _Hux_ ,” Ben tries again, beginning to truly worry now. He tries the door, but it’s locked. “Look, if- we can just forget that happened, if you didn’t like it. If you didn’t want it after all. It’s fine, really.”

“That’s not-“ Hux’s voice chokes through the door, muffled by the heavy metal. “That’s not it.”

 _Enough_ , Ben thinks, rubbing a hand over his face tiredly. He concentrates on the lock mechanism of the door, twisting it loose with the force until the door creaks open.

Hux stands in front of the mirror, shivering despite his overheating components. All of his skin save for that of his hands, feet and head has been peeled off and dumped on the floor, his chest open to reach the hardware inside. He’s gripping the edges of the mesh cavity hard enough to warp the durasteel, staring unseeingly into his own eyes in the mirror. The droid makes a small, static noise from his throat, almost like a sob, and Ben spins Hux around to pull him into his arms, shushing him gently.

“Hux,” he sighs, “what happened? What is it?”

“The- the ventilation system,” Hux shudders, “the one for poison.”

Ben pushes him back a little to look at the thing, still settled where the droid’s ribs should be. The space for a gas canister remains as empty as it was the first time Ben saw it.

“It’s _on_ ,” Hux chokes out, “I didn’t- I didn’t turn it on, it just- by itself-“

“When we…kissed?” Ben asks, leaning back to look Hux in the eyes. Hux nods, teeth starting to chatter with the violence of his shivering, so Ben gathers him up into his arms again. “Shhh. It’s okay. It’s empty, Hux. It’s still empty.”

“Ben, I _didn't-_ “

“I know, I know,” Ben soothes. He picks Hux up in his arms bridal style, moving the droid out of the cramped refresher and into the cockpit of the ship. He sets Hux down in the co-pilot’s seat. “We’ll fix it. _I’ll_ fix it.” With a few buttons he pulls them out of lightspeed, slowing down in the middle of nothing. Hux seemed to like looking out at the stars, before; Ben hopes the still view will calm him, at least a little. He leaves him there a moment before returning with a blanket to wrap Hux up in.

They sit there in silence for a while. Hux looks out the windows blankly, but his cooling system is starting to slow down, the shivering subsiding.

“Do you know why I prefer sleeping with droids?” Ben asks suddenly. Hux gives him a sour look, as if to say _this is not the time_. “It’s relevant, I promise,” he grins ruefully.

“When I still…when I was training to be a Jedi with my Uncle, the force sent me a vision. It was me. I was older, dressed in black, and I was- there was blood everywhere. I’d killed everybody,” Ben swallows, shudders himself now. “Everybody I loved, all the other padawans, and I was just _stepping_ on them like they were nothing, and I could- I could feel their flesh squeezing under my boots.”

Ben curls up his legs to lean his head against his knees. “I was so scared, Hux,” he breathes quietly, closing his eyes. “I was so afraid of hurting them. That’s why I gave up my training. I didn’t want to ever become that man.” He huffs a short, hollow laugh. “It haunts me. I can’t stand to have people in my bed, I can’t bear the feeling of naked flesh and blood underneath me.”  

“It reminds you. You’re afraid to hurt them, too,” Hux finishes softly.

“A droid can be fixed,” Ben agrees, just a whisper. “It’s...reassuring. The metal. The weight of it. It feels safe.”

Hux looks back out towards the stars, letting the confession sink in.

“I meant it, you know,” Hux says after a few minutes, “when I told you about killing everybody I’ve ever slept with. I don’t think I’ve even kissed anyone that I haven’t killed later on.” He tips his head back against the headrest of the seat. “You know, I was hoping when you wiped my memory that I’d forget all the details of those espionage missions, but I can still remember every single one in excruciating detail. All of those disgusting hands on me. I was so glad when body six was built from scratch, I finally felt _clean_ again.”

“Why did you keep the ventilation system?” Ben asks.

Hux shrugs. “Defence mechanism I suppose. Just in case. I hardly ever armed the thing, but it felt good to have it there.”

Ben reaches a hand out to stroke his knuckles against Hux’s cheek, scratching lazily at the new beard. “And now?”

The droid leans into the touch, shivering at the sensation. He closes his eyes slightly and nuzzles into Ben’s big hand. “I don’t know,” he whispers. “I don’t like that it armed itself automatically. I don’t…I wanted to kiss you, really, but I’m afraid to hurt you. You’ve been so good to me.”

Ben tuts. “Don’t kiss me because I’ve been _nice_ to you, Hux,” he laughs softly. “Kiss me because you like me.”

“I do,” Hux says, eyes snapping open to give Ben a fierce look. “You’re awful, it’s wonderful.”

Ben barks a real laugh at that, grinning widely. “You’re so fucked up.”

“Droidfucker,” Hux smirks, and this time, the word feels like an endearment.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We interrupt this fic for some tooth-rotting fluff.  
> There's about two chapters left after this one, in which the smut will happen.
> 
> Also, the Leia-style necklaces mentioned in this chapter are based on the one she wears at the end of A New Hope in the medal ceremony scene.

They sit and watch the stars together for a long time.

A comfortable kind of silence stretches between them that neither feels the need to break; there’s a pink-tinged planet hanging in the distance, an orange one a little closer on the other side, and a couple of rocky asteroids lazily making their way past between them.

From the corner of his eye Ben notices sudden movement. He tilts his face towards the droid to watch as Hux’s head slowly tips forwards, before suddenly jolting back up right, eyes blinking sleepily. The droid repeats the motion a few times before realisation dawns.

“Are you actually _tired_?” Ben asks disbelievingly.

Hux turns his head to give Ben a bleary scowl. “I need to rest too, you know,” he rubs at his eyes, “I haven’t recharged my battery in a few weeks, now is about the right time for it to be running low.”

“Do I need to connect you up to the ship or something?” Ben frowns. He’s not entirely sure the ship has enough power to spare for the droid.

“No, no,” Hux says, and then actually _yawns_. “I can just…power down and it…does it itself...” his head tips forwards again, and this time Ben has to reach out with the force to stop the droid’s head from crashing into the dashboard.

“Let’s put you to bed then,” Ben smiles, scooping the droid still bundled up in a blanket into his arms. Hux makes no movement to protest, boneless in Ben’s grip as he moves the droid to the bedroom and deposits him gently on the bed.

All of the synth-skin pieces that Hux pulled off are still lying in a haphazard pile in the refresher. He should probably put them back on the droid – something’s only going to get lost or damaged if he doesn’t, Ben thinks. Shutting the still open chest closed, Ben gathers the (slightly disturbing like this) pile of skin up in his arms and puts them down next to Hux on the bed, picking a piece up and trying to begin the jigsaw puzzle of Hux’s body.

Hux keeps his eyes closed – he’s not fully powered down, Ben can hear a motor slowly ticking along inside of the droid, but he makes no move to help or complain either. Occasionally his eyes flicker open to look unseeingly at Ben, before the pale, blonde eyelashes fall shut once more.

Ben lets himself linger on putting Hux back together, not like the clinical process of unpeeling him when he was in his cell. He takes his time to smooth each piece down, tracing the pale freckles with the tips of his fingers. The droid seems to sigh occasionally as he does so, in his sleep or in appreciation, Ben isn’t sure. He skims his fingers lightly past Hux’s nipples, wondering if they feel any more or less than the rest of his skin, or if they’re purely decorative.

He ends just as he began last time, with the skin around Hux’s hips. He rolls Hux onto his front to press the skin of his buttocks into place – the synth skin is thicker for these pieces, the bare minimum of padding that the metal frame doesn’t provide – then rolls him back to finish connecting Hux’s cock to the port against his pelvis with a click.

Back in one piece, the droid looks so peaceful like this, Ben thinks, naked on top of the sheets; if it weren’t for the just-visible seams between each piece of skin and the lack of his chest rising and falling, he would look just like a regular human. He wants to reach out and touch, wants to press his mouth to every freckle on the slim body laid out before him, but he’s already spent too long on putting Hux back together, he feels like enough of a creep already.

Ben nearly jumps out of his own skin when he suddenly feels Hux’s hand rubbing against his crotch – he didn’t even notice Hux’s arm moving, so lost in watching the rest of him.

“You’re _hard_ ,” Hux grins up at him sleepily, voice teasing, eyelashes fluttering open again.

Ben blushes, feels his body heating up – he is hard, achingly so, hadn’t even felt the arousal pooling in his groin while he worked until now.

He gently pushes Hux’s hand away, takes it in his and presses his mouth to the knuckles. “Not now,” he murmurs, trying to keep his voice steady. “You need to sleep, and I want to kiss you before…before anything else.”

Hux smiles up at him gently, eyelids falling shut, and with one last sigh Ben hears his engines finally powering down, vibrations slowly fading out as he settles into recharge mode. He levitates Hux slowly with the force to get the sheets out from under the droid, pulling them up to Hux’s chin and tucking the still, lifeless man into bed.

Ben shudders a little, willing his erection to go away, but the arousal doesn’t seem to be fading any time soon. He wonders if it would be weird of him to take care of it in the refresher while Hux sleeps out here – then decides that’s infinitely less creepy than doing so while he _watches_ Hux recharge, which is the only other option his brain seems able to provide. He hasn’t showered after his trip to the dusty surface of Yantooine yet, he figures he can kill two birds with one stone this way.

The ship carries just enough water with it for about four showers while they’re away. Ben closes the door to the refresher and turns the water up as hot as it will go, endeavouring to make this quick – he doesn’t want to waste the supply.

He imagines that it’s Hux’s thin fingers jerking him off, not his own big, clumsy hands. That devious smirk, Hux looking up at him with wicked blue eyes as he takes the head of Ben’s cock between his lips; the droid on his knees before him as he takes him into his mouth all the way to the base. He imagines the little sighs Hux made as he put him back together, tries to hear in his head what they would sound like muffled around his dick.

Ben thinks about coming in Hux’s mouth, cum dribbling down his chin and spattered over the freckles of his face, of leaning down to kiss the droid and tasting himself, and then he’s coming hard for real, groaning low as his release spurts against the shower wall.  

He leans panting against the walls for a while, letting the water wash the mess away – then remembers that he’s already been in here too long, quickly scrubbing himself down before turning the shower off.

When he exits the refresher in clean clothes, he looks down at Hux in his bed – the droid sleeps on, dead to the galaxy. It feels somehow wrong to join him under the covers after he’s just jerked off to the thought of Hux in the shower, so instead Ben shuffles shamefully to the living area to sleep on the couch.

He’ll take Hux out tomorrow, he thinks as he dozes off; a real date. He’ll do this properly.

 

*

 

Ben wakes up to the sound of a news anchor reporting on the escape of a recently jailed wookie gang leader on Coruscant. He blinks his eyes slowly open, face stuck to the couch uncomfortably where he’d been drooling in his sleep, to find Hux already awake, sitting by his feet and watching the holoscreen. Ben does a double take at the sight of the droid, still unused to the new hair and beard, before yesterday comes flooding back to him.

“Good morning,” Hux says without tearing his gaze from the screen. “Isn’t that your father’s wookie?”

Ben rolls over to get a better look at the screen. The gang leader actually does bear a striking resemblance to Chewbacca, only with much darker fur around the face. For once he doesn’t have to start the ‘not all wookies look the same’ argument. “Not him,” he grunts.

Hux hums in acknowledgement as the news anchor switches to a story about a podracing rigging scandal. Ben sits up and stretches, something clicking worryingly in his back. Sleeping on the couch may not have been the best idea, in retrospect.

“Let’s go somewhere today,” Ben says, nudging the droid with his foot. “I want to take you out someplace.”

Two blue eyes roll their way towards Ben, a wry smile on Hux’s face. “Aren’t we a little old to be going on dates?”

“Never,” Ben insists with another nudge to Hux’s thigh. “Come on, you must have figured out _somewhere_ you want to go by now.”

“Actually,” Hux says thoughtfully, expression turning a little self-conscious, “I’d… kind of like to go shopping?”

Ben blinks at the droid with surprise. Of all the things he thought Hux might say, this is definitely not it. “Unexpected, but okay. What kind of shopping? We can’t go back to Yantooine, there’s probably a warrant for my arrest out by now…it’s okay though, they issue so many there that they only last a month before they expire…”

With a shrug, Hux turns back to face the holoscreen. “There’s nothing I want in particular. I’d just…kind of like to go and buy stupid things I don’t need,” he says quietly. “I want to- to _own_ things that are all mine. Maybe some clothes that aren’t your hand-me-downs,” Hux grins.

“I think I know a place,” Ben hums, standing to go and set a new course in the cockpit. There’s a moon market two hours by lightspeed away, so he punches in the coordinates and activates the hyperdrive.

After dressing for the day, he wanders back into the living area to rummage in his cupboards for some breakfast – there’s a few old nutrition bars that will tide him over until they get there. He remembers there being a lot of street food the last time Han took him to this market…he wonders if anyone will be selling fried desert-crawlers, those were good.

He flops back onto the couch, where Hux has turned his attention to the datapad Ben gave him. The droid seems to be doing something illegal.

“Should I ask?” Ben squints down at the screen. There are a lot of numbers and passcodes involved with whatever Hux is doing.

“I’m getting my money,” Hux explains. “I did actually get a salary from the First Order, you know. There’s a few different accounts under pseudonyms- don’t make that face at me, they won’t track this.”

“Hm. Well, at least I won’t have to use mindtricks on _everyone_ today, then.” Ben vaguely wonders how much he has in his own account; he thinks he’d kind of like to buy Hux something honestly this time.

 

*

 

“That is disgusting,” Hux announces.

“Fuck you, it’s delicious,” Ben says with his mouth full of fried desert-crawler. He found a stall selling them skewered on sticks right by the parking lot, and he’s already on his fourth. “You’re just jealous because you can’t taste anything anymore.”

“I would never have eaten something with that many _legs_ ,” the droid shudders underneath his cowl. Ben had insisted on Hux wearing Luke’s old pilot jacket and borrowing a dark grey cowl to hide his face – just in case. Ben never goes to these sorts of places without his own tan cloak covering him either.

The moon market is pleasant, as these things go – not as seedy as Yantooine or Mos Espa, but nothing like the vast shopping malls on planets like Naboo or Coruscant. For now, Ben is content to eat street food and follow Hux from stall to stall. The droid is incredibly picky, and nothing seems to have satisfied his exacting standards so far. Ben learnt long ago from following his mother around that it’s best to just let shoppers get on with it. He’s actually kind of relieved that Hux is being so fussy with his purchases – he’d had the awful worry that the droid would turn into some kind of hoarder in his quest to own things.

“This one,” Hux says suddenly, stopping in front of a clothes stall. Ben elects to wait outside – there’s another food stall just next to it, and he’s never seen half of the things they have marinating.

The droid comes out again a few minutes later to find Ben chewing on what he has just learnt is sweet and sour buttermouse.

“You just had four desert-crawlers!” Hux says disbelievingly, but he seems to be in a good enough mood – there’s a bag in his hand full of purchases now.

“I’m a growing boy,” Ben informs him, punctuating the point by taking another messy bite of his food. “You gotta try these things when you see them, Hux. Live a little.”

“I have never once regretted the loss of my digestion system. Also, you have sauce on your nose.”

After three hours in the market, Ben predictably becomes Hux’s pack mule, carrying three bags on each arm. Ben is bored of eating strange things now – for one thing he’s full, but for another he doesn’t think anything is going to top the sugarleaf truffles he found. He bought a whole box of those – maybe he’ll give some to Rey and his mother when he gets home, if he hasn’t eaten them all by then.

“Are you intending for _every_ item in your wardrobe to be black?” he asks, inspecting the contents of the bags he’s been laden with while Hux rummages through the selection of a shoe stall. “How much have you spent today? Are you secretly rich? Have you been holding out on me?”

“There’s grey in there too,” Hux says defensively, not tearing his eyes away from the boots he’s inspecting. He tosses them to the side, apparently deeming them unworthy. “And don’t talk about money, it’s crass.”

Ben hums, looking around at the other stalls nearby. He’s considering buying Hux a clothes trunk of his own as a gift (it seems like the droid is going to need one by the end of this) when his eye catches on a stall behind them.

There’s a little green creature with big ears and old, wrinkled skin selling jewellery made with precious metals. She smiles welcomingly at Ben when he looks over. Her wares look like the kind of thing Leia used to wear when she was young, all blocky, silver, geometric shapes.

Hux comes to peer over Ben’s shoulder, apparently giving up on the shoe stall. “Something for your cousin?” he asks, looking at the necklace Ben is holding up to the light to inspect.

“Mm, no,” Ben smiles fondly, instead turning to clasp it around Hux’s neck. It’s a chain of silver squares, longer than the one he remembers in his mother’s old holos but with smaller pieces. “She gets enough useless trinkets from Dameron to last a lifetime, I think. I dread to think what Finn will buy her once he saves up enough.”

The smaller man raises an eyebrow up at Ben. “People generally don’t buy jewellery for their droids, you know,” Hux says skeptically. “This doesn’t seem in keeping with our charade.” Still, he doesn’t seem too opposed to the idea when Ben pushes him towards a mirror, hand running faintly along the metal laid over his chest.

“They already think I’m eccentric, what harm will a little more of it do. What do you think?” Ben presses, standing close behind Hux to bring another, similar necklace up for inspection. “Triangles, or squares?”

“I don’t need either,” Hux says uncertainly with a shrug, but his eyes stray towards the evenly spaced triangles.

“Triangles it is then,” Ben says, unclasping the square one and putting it back where it was. “How much?” he asks the old creature. Seemingly mute, her wrinkles bunch up into a smile as she scribbles down a number on a piece of paper and passes it over.

“Ben, _really_ ,” the droid tries to protest when he catches sight of it, but Ben is already haggling with the little green woman. They pass numbers back and forth for ten minutes before she finally scrunches up her face and nods. He hands her his datachip to pay while she grumbles in some unknown language.

“Humour me,” Ben says when he clasps the gift around Hux’s neck. “There; now you own a stupid thing you don’t need.” The flustered look on the smaller man’s face makes Ben sure that Hux would be blushing furiously if he had any blood in his skin. This, at least, is something he’s sure that Hux never had in the First Order, either before or after the droid experiments.

(It’s still expensive enough that he’s forced to use a mindtrick to con a seller a few stalls down into giving him a trunk for free, but he doesn’t tell Hux that. The way the droid’s hands come up to play with the silver pieces around his neck every few minutes makes it worth it.)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now for the smut!  
> Gosh I really struggled with this chapter, this is the first time I've attempted writing something like this. I hope it's okay! orz

By the time they get back to the ship and take off again, Ben has bought more bizarre food, this time to take home and share. He’d insisted on circling back around to buy more sugarleaf truffles – there’s no way they’re going to last, and he feels like he needs to bring back _something_ for his cousin.

Hux is neatly folding up his new clothes into the trunk Ben stole for him. They’re just basic things, really, all in various shades of grey to black, but at least he has clothes that fit him properly now. He seems content with his small collection.

They’ve decided to head back to the Resistance base, taking the long way around. Without a destination in mind, they’re just burning fuel – they’ll take another trip when there’s somewhere they actually want to go. While Hux inspects his new things, Ben sits down heavily on the couch and tries to savour the 12 hours of blissful silence he has left, slipping easily into the meditative state Luke taught him. He’s not looking forward to returning to the miasma of judgement that awaits them. Maybe he and Hux should just orbit the planet from now on…it’s so beautifully quiet in space...

He surfaces slowly from his meditation to the feel of a cool cheek nuzzling against his neck. Hux’s arms come from behind the sofa to wrap around his shoulders. Ben hums questioningly up at the droid.

“Thank you,” Hux says against his neck, pressing his lips there. The feel of his whiskers brushing against the sensitive skin makes Ben shiver a little.

“You bought most of it yourself,” Ben shrugs, trying to twist his head around to see Hux’s face. He gets just far enough that the droid can press a kiss to his cheek as well.

“Do you have any tools on board?” he murmurs against Ben’s skin.

Ben frowns. “A few. Nothing heavy duty. Why?”

Hux moves back down to Ben’s neck, trailing his lips down to where it meets his shoulder. “I want you,” he says, “to disconnect,” punctuates his words with light kisses, “the ventilation system.”

“You decided to keep it, then?” Ben sighs dreamily into the attention.

 “I think the weight in my chest would be a little lopsided without it,” Hux laughs softly. “Just disconnect it from the rest of me, that’s enough.”

Reluctantly, Ben pulls away from the hold to dig through his utility box in the cockpit, picking out a few tools he thinks he might need.

He finds Hux in the bedroom, sweater and undershirt already folded neatly on top of his new trunk, and the silver necklace laid reverently over them. The droid is looking at his synth-skin chest in the mirror.

“Which is easier, front or back?” he asks Ben’s reflection.

“Back, I think,” Ben says. “Lie down on the bed so I can get to it.”

Hux obediently lays down on top of the sheets, pillowing his head on folded arms, and Ben scoots over to sit next to him. He peels open the skin from around where Hux’s shoulder-blades should be, revealing the hatch that opens up the mesh around the droid’s back. The ventilation system off to one side is connected to his main systems by a few wires, but part of the component stretches up into Hux’s neck to enable delivery of the poison.

“Is it enough to just disconnect the wires?” Ben asks dubiously. “I think I’d have to take you completely apart to get the vent hose out of your neck.”

“Nngh, let me find the blueprints,” Hux grunts, eyes flickering as he searches through his phantom folder. “Can you- there should be a valve on the piece that leads up to my neck, can you shut that off? Then just do the wires.”

Ben does as Hux instructs, tightening the valve as far as it will go before brushing his fingers over the wires, trying to see where they connect. Hux shudders a little at the sensation.

“You have sensors inside, too?”

“A few. Just enough to know if something’s going wrong.”

Ben unplugs the first wire easily enough, and Hux lets out a little gasp. “You know,” Ben begins as he tries to figure the second one out, “you never did tell me what feels good to droids. Just that it was different.”

“Repetition,” Hux sighs as the second wire comes loose, “repeating patterns. Distortion. Overblown sensors. Feedback loops.”

“Does this feel good?” Ben leans in to whisper in Hux’s ear, pulling the third wire out of its port as he does.

“It feels like…too much,” Hux says, “but in a good way. Satisfying. Like pulling off a bandage quickly? Maybe? I don’t really remember how that feels.”

In response, Ben tugs out the fourth wire as quickly as he can, Hux gasping loudly and arching his back a little at the shock. “Just one more,” Ben reassures him, pressing his lips against the nape of Hux’s neck. “This one’s hardwired in though, grit your teeth.” He pulls a screwdriver from his selection of tools to try and open the panels on the ventilation system that the wire disappears into. Hux squirms uncomfortably, but makes no move to pull free. With the panel lifted off, it’s easy enough to twist the final wire out of its casing, Hux melting against the mattress with relief as he does.

Ben twists up the disconnected wires neatly to tuck them out of the way where they won’t get caught, but Hux can’t feel them anymore. He leans back to close the mesh panel into place.

As soon as it clicks shut, Hux launches himself up, twisting around frantically to press his lips to Ben’s in a rough, messy kiss, all teeth and bumping noses. Ben laughs as he pins Hux back down by the wrists, pulling away when the droid tries to surge upwards to meet him.

“Slow down,” he soothes, smiling at the wild look on Hux’s face. “You’re free. You have all the time in the world,” he repeats. Lowering himself down to keep Hux in place with the weight of his body instead, Ben draws him into a more gentle kiss, sucking gently at his lower lip. The droid makes a desperate little noise into his mouth, parting his lips to let Ben’s tongue meet his own. Hux tastes like metal and mint, the lubricant that keeps his mouth working faintly flavoured.

“Better?” Ben asks when he has to break free for air. Hux seems momentarily confused by the action, until he remembers that Ben still needs to breathe. “No more lethal components turning on without your permission?”

“No more,” Hux agrees, moving his hands to curl around Ben’s back and keep him in place. He allows Ben to set the pace of their kissing, unsure when he’ll need breaks to breathe, tugging at his lips gently with his teeth whenever he does. The droid parts his legs slightly to allow Ben’s body to slip further between them.

Ben draws back. “ _You’re_ hard,” he grins at Hux, repeating what the droid said to him last night.

Hux lets his head drop and rolls eyes, lifting his hips to grind once against Ben. Ben groans from deep in his chest at the friction of their still-covered cocks brushing together. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Hux smirks, revving his engine suggestively. The sound makes Ben shudder with need.

He slips his fingers under Ben’s shirt, trailing lightly against his skin before tugging the material up and over wide shoulders. The droid pushes Ben to sit up a bit so he can look appreciatively at the toned muscles above him. Ben shivers as the cool, thin digits trail over his stomach, goose bumps forming behind them.

“What do you want?” he asks, sitting up fully and kneeling over the droid. He lifts one big hand to cup Hux’s cheek, sighing lovingly when Hux turns his face to nuzzle into his palm.

“So many things,” Hux murmurs against his hand. He fixes Ben with a burning, hungry gaze, almost frightening in its intensity, before sitting up to push him backwards against the bed so he can straddle Ben’s hips, splaying his hands out against the warm chest in front of him.

“I want you,” Hux breathes, grinding their hips together in earnest now, “I want to own you. I want to be owned by you.” He leans down to lick a slow stripe up from the hollow of Ben’s neck, over his Adam’s apple, and up to the tip of his chin. “I want you to look at me, only me, with those adoring eyes.” He drags his wet lips along Ben’s cheek to whisper in his ear. “I want you to come inside me. I want to feel it dripping down my thighs.”

Ben’s only response to that is a garbled, incoherent “ _hnnghh_ ” before he fists a hand in Hux’s hair to pull him back into a heated kiss, desperate and open-mouthed. They push and pull aimlessly at each other for a while, Hux scooting down to bite and suck dark, possessive marks onto warm skin. Ben drags him back up to bite hard at the droid’s earlobes, earning a breathy moan from the droid; he watches as the synth-skin struggles to resume its regular shape, a perfect indentation of his teeth left behind. He scrapes his nails along the still-exposed mesh along Hux’s back, the droid shuddering at the sensation.

“Your turn,” Hux gasps, arching back against Ben’s nails, “you tell me what _you_ want.”

“I want these clothes off yesterday,” Ben grunts, moving his hands down to pull frantically at the clasps of Hux’s pants. The droid sits up a little to help him, tugging his black underwear down with them, before drawing back to drag the rest of Ben’s clothes off too. His smile widens when Ben’s cock springs free, thick and long like the rest of him.

“What else?” Hux demands, moving to straddle the taller man again. Ben’s eyes roll back into his head at the feel of the droid’s smooth, synthetic arousal rocking against his own, as soft and flawless as the rest of him, bucking upwards helplessly.

“I want,” Ben gasps, chokes in air for a moment, “I want this time to be about you,” he tries again, trying to look up earnestly into the blue eyes above him. He reaches his hands up to cradle the droid’s face gently. “It’s your turn, Hux. You’re free. I’ll give you anything you want. Anything.” He doesn't have to say it out loud for Hux to understand what he really means; that he wants to give Hux back control of his body, wants him to feel human again.

Hux turns his head away shyly at that, trying to escape the intense stare fixed on him, but he has a small, pleased smile on his face as he chews on his lip. Ben takes the moment to catch his breath, to try and calm himself down – he’s not going to last long enough to give Hux anything, at this rate.

“Hey, Ben,” Hux says slowly, turning his dark gaze back towards him with a sly expression. He runs his tongue along his teeth. “Guess what I can do.”

Ben hums at him questioningly. Hux takes one of Ben’s hands in his own, pulling it against his chest and dragging it slowly, slowly downwards – Ben reaches out a thumb to graze Hux’s cock as he passes, earning a delightful twitch from the droid – until he’s guiding Ben’s hand down between his legs, nudging him to crook two fingers up inside him. The droid lets out a pleased sigh as they press upwards.

Ben’s eyes widen as he presses his fingers deeper. “Is that- are you already slicked up??” he chokes in surprise.

Hux tilts his head to the side, raising an eyebrow quizzically. “What did you think those bottles you brought me from Yantooine were?” he smirks.

“…Engine oil?” Ben blinks up at him, face flushing.

Hux snorts, lifting a little to fuck himself slowly on Ben’s fingers. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.” He sighs happily, tipping his head back at the sensation. “There’s a little tank, and- never mind. I can control it, you know. But that’s not what I wanted to show you.”

With that, the tight walls around his fingers start _vibrating_.

Ben barks a sharp laugh at that. “No _way_ ,” he grins wildly up at Hux. “There’s no way that was in the original blueprints.”

Hux shrugs. “There’s this, too,” he says, and then it feels like rippling pressure around Ben’s fingers, clenching and releasing in waves, and Ben’s eyes widen even further.

“Oh _noooo_ ,” he groans theatrically, letting his head flop back heavily against the mattress and closing his eyes. “I fucking _love_ the wavy thing, I’m never gonna get anything done ever again with you around, I’ll never get my dick out of you,” he says mournfully.

“Want to use it now?” Hux laughs, lifting himself off Ben’s fingers teasingly.

“Force, no, this will be over in ten seconds flat if you keep that up.” Ben sits up to bite lightly at Hux’s shoulder, moving his arms around to scrape along the mesh of Hux’s back again. The droid gasps at the feeling. He grabs a fistful of red hair, tipping Hux’s head back. “Now shut up and let me give you what you want,” Ben breathes, warm against the length of Hux’s neck.

He guides Hux to turn around on the bed, gently easing him onto his hands and knees, pushing at the droid’s shoulders to get him to settle his upper half flat on the mattress.

“Like this?” Ben teases, scraping his nails up and down the exposed mesh in front of him with a noisy, metallic sound. He’s rewarded with a long, drawn out “ahh” from the droid below him, unable to help himself from settling his aching cock between the cleft of Hux’s ass and rutting against him.

“Get _on_ with it already,” Hux groans, reaching back to try and guide Ben inside him, but Ben swats his hands away.

“Ah-ah. Just lie back,” Ben soothes, but he lines himself up obligingly anyway, and _finally_ he’s sinking inside Hux’s impossibly tight hole, slick and warmed by the overheating engine above it. He can feel the rumble of the droid’s components around him – even without any of the extra functions on he seems to vibrate slightly. Ben watches the droid’s systems work through the mesh of his back as he settles inside him, LEDs blinking erratically inside his torso as he bottoms out.

“Hold me like- ahhh, just like that, press _hard_ ,” Hux whines breathlessly as Ben’s big hands wrap a bruising grip around his hips, keeping him in place. Ben tries to set an even, steady pace, thrusting in and out with short, sharp motions – repetition, repeating patterns, Hux had said. He can manage that; he clenches and releases the pressure of his hands on Hux’s hips in time with pushing in and pulling out, feeling the hard, unrelenting metal beneath the synth-skin protest against his hands, and the droid moans appreciatively underneath him, trying to arch his back further and push Ben in deeper.

It takes all of his willpower not to just fuck into Hux hard and fitfully like he wants to, biting down on his lip to keep the same pace going – the longer he keeps the same rhythm, the more the droid seems to absolutely fall apart underneath him, knees trembling with the effort of keeping his hips up and wrecked little sounds tumbling from his lips, lost in the layered feedback building as Ben drags repetitively over each sensor buried deep inside of him.

Ben replaces the squeeze and release of his hands on Hux’s hips with the force, pressing invisibly along his body, instead pressing one hand to keep himself up against the mattress and the other to reach down and firmly grip the droid’s dick. He strokes the length with a different rhythm to his thrusts, slightly offset, Hux’s moans growing louder and longer as he does, eyes rolling back into his head as he drowns in the jarring feeling of two different rhythms building in his systems at once.

Cooling fans working overtime and engine thrumming, the droid’s whole body seems to vibrate, until finally, just as he thinks his rhythm might completely fall apart, Ben’s patience pays off.

Hux jolts as if electrocuted as he comes, systems shorting out for a moment and body spasming wildly underneath Ben – it’s all he can do to hold on, pace completely lost as Hux’s walls squeeze and ripple erratically around his length. Hux _shouts_ wordlessly, voice laced with static as he spills excess lubricant over Ben’s hand, and with one last, violent thrust Ben is pulled over the edge with him, coming hard and deep inside the shuddering droid.

He collapses on top of his lover as Hux’s legs finally give out, pinning the smaller man down underneath him as he gasps for air.

“ _Fffuuck_ ,” Ben huffs against Hux’s hair. The droid continues to tremble underneath him, making soft keening noises as the feedback loop in his processors starts to wind down. Ben pulls out gently, rolling off of the droid to allow him to cycle some air into his cooling systems.

He shuffles lower down the bed to rest his head against Hux’s hip, watching breathlessly at the sight of his own release slowly leaking out of the droid’s hole.

“Good?” Ben asks, nudging at Hux with his nose and wrapping his arms around twitching thighs.

The droid tries to reply, but the only sound that comes out is another little choke of static. With a click, Hux’s voice box resets itself. “ _Good_ ,” he moans weakly. Hux rolls onto his side, stomach and sheets sticky underneath him. “ _Stars_. Ben. Fuck. Have to- I’m going to have to recharge again, shit, pretty sure you just drained half of my battery,” he laughs tiredly.

They doze there together a while, sated. 

 

*  
  
  
“I have another proposition for you,” Ben murmurs against the small of Hux’s back once he’s finally caught his breath and his pulse has stopped racing. The droid’s cooling fans are still on, but they’ve slowed now, not spinning at such a great speed beneath his overheated skin.

Hux sighs contentedly, peering over his shoulder to look at where Ben is wrapped around his hips. “Go on.”

“You’re not going to like it,” Ben says slowly, pressing open-mouthed kisses wherever he can reach.

“I didn’t like this one when it started either,” Hux snorts. He twists around to lie on his other side, Ben’s face now level with his bellybutton instead. He reaches out to tangle his fingers in Ben’s dark hair, sex-mussed and sticking up in all directions. “But it seems to have worked out nicely in the end, don’t you think?”

Ben’s wide mouth stretches into a grin, and he leisurely kisses his way back up to Hux’s face.

“Remember when you offered to hack into the Resistance members’ personal consoles?” he begins, and Hux thinks he likes where this is going already.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter everybody!! Thank you for sticking with me to the end of this! Now hopefully the writing bug will leave me alone so I can get on with my life orz

It’s mid-morning when they land back at the Resistance Base.

Hux sighs deeply at the thought of having to be polite again, closing his eyes a moment to settle into his act before opening them again and descending the boarding ramp. He’s dressed in some of his new clothes: a grey shirt with long sleeves and slim black pants. The morning light glints pleasantly against the silver triangles of his necklace, hanging heavy over his shoulders – the sight of it sends a pleased, possessive warmth through Ben.

There are a few pilots and mechanics hanging around the airfield doing maintenance on the x-wings. There’s a feeling of vague dread and irritation coming from them as Ben follows Hux down the ramp onto solid ground again.

He looks out over them and spots the pilot from the canteen.

“Hux, you head on to the workshop and get started on that _thing_ I asked you to do,” Ben says meaningfully, locking eyes with the pilot frozen across from him. The look on Ben’s face causes a pulse of fear to ripple out from the pilot, and he holds the man’s feet down with the force before he can make a run for it. The droid gives him a smile in reply, slightly more malicious than he should let it be, before doing as he’s told.

Ben marches towards the pilot, still frozen to the spot.

He towers over the man, giving him a long, icy look and taking a little too much enjoyment in the thoughts spilling out of the pilot to be healthy – _oh god, he’s going to snap me in half like he did with that table, this is how I die, I never should have called him a droidfucker to his face, fuck, he’s the General’s_ son _what was I thinking, fuck, fuck_ -

Slowly, purposefully, Ben leans down to level his face with the pilot’s.

“He has a vibrate function,” is all Ben says to him. “It’s _amazing_.”

The pilot’s mind seems to short out at that, all thought stopping dead in its tracks. As Ben lets his grip with the force go, the man in front of him goes bright red, emotions flooding back into his mind with all the force of a tidal wave, mostly settling somewhere between horror and acute embarrassment.

With that, Ben leans back up to his full height, turning sharply on his heel to stride confidently back to his workshop. He tries not to look too smug as he does.

 

*

 

When he gets to the workshop, Hux is holding his BB unit namesake up in the air and looking at it like a proud parent whose child has just said its first words.

“He’s learnt _sarcasm_!” Hux explains, sounding like he might be crying actual tears of joy if he had tear ducts anymore. “You beautiful, mutant shit-show of a droid, you finally did it!”

If BB-Hux could scowl, Ben thinks it probably would. Instead it hisses like an angry cat down at the red-haired man holding it.

“I’m keeping this one,” Hux declares, holding BB-Hux to his chest. “He’s mine now, I love him. His name is Millicent.”

Ben snorts. “I’m not sure I dare to try and give him his propulsion mechanics at this point. Pretty sure he’d attempt to set the base on fire if he had any control over his lower body.” He looks down at the angry droid held to Hux’s chest. “Truly, you are Hux the third,” Ben tells it.  

There’s a little line of BB units outside the door to Ben’s workshop, along with a cleaning droid that looks like it’s been stepped on and a kitchen droid with an arm that’s been half-melted in some sort of oven accident. How are there so many of them that need maintenance when they’ve only been gone less than three days?? He’s disappointed to find BB-8 waiting there among them for repairs.

“I expected better of you,” Ben shakes his head at BB-8 as he rolls inside with the others. The tiny droid croons sadly up at him, hanging its head guiltily. “No, I’m not mad, just disappointed.” He starts on fixing 8 first anyway while Hux coos sickeningly at Millicent on the other side of the workshop. The damage isn’t too bad, just a few servos jerked out of place.

A familiar presence in the force is running very quickly towards the workshop; Ben turns around in his chair and looks at the door expectantly, just a moment before Rey barrels in.

“ _Why_ is the entire base talking about you and your droid’s sex life?” she demands breathlessly. She flicks her eyes over towards Hux briefly, doing a double take at the new hair and beard before shaking herself out of it, determined not to be distracted. She glares at her cousin again. “You’ve been back _half an hour_ and already it’s all I can hear, what the fuck, Ben.”

Ben smirks up at her from where he’s sprawled lazily in his chair. “That was fast.”

“The plan is going nicely, then,” Hux agrees. He’s stroking Millicent’s head like it’s a cat while the smaller droid mutters insulting little beeps under its breath. He turns around to ignore Ben and Rey, holding Millicent up in the air and making kissy faces at him. “Who’s a little murdermonster? You are, yes you are!”

Rey looks uncertainly between them. “So…you two are…?” Ben rolls his eyes, but nods and pulls down the collar of his shirt to reveal one of the dark bruises Hux left on him last night. She grins so wide at the sight that her mouth threatens to spill off her face, bounding over to Ben to spin him around in a bone-crushing hug.

“ _Finally!_ ” Rey crows victoriously, “I am going to have _so much_ fun getting revenge on you for all the shit you pulled with Poe and Finn.”

“Hmm, well maybe I’ll keep the sugarleaf truffles I got you for myself, then,” Ben teases, pulling the box off his desk to wave them tantalizingly in front of her.

“You will not,” Rey grins, snatching the packet out of his hands. She stuffs two into her mouth at once and sighs happily at the taste. “If it wasn’t for me capturing Hux, you wouldn’t be getting laid. You _owe_ me,” she says with her mouth full.

The waves of pride and relief at seeing her cousin happy betray her.

 

*

 

Ben’s plan to get everyone off his back is simple.

Instead of protesting against the accusations levelled at him, he leans into their opinions with reckless abandon. He holds Hux’s hand in public. He wears shirts with collars low enough to let hickeys be seen. He presses his lips against the droid’s cheek in the middle of the canteen.

And the moment he hears even the slightest thought of disgust, he levels a long, considering look at its owner before firing back with some ammunition of his own.

The combination of his ability with the force and connecting Hux to the Resistance mainframe has made it alarmingly easy for Ben to dig up the sexual proclivities of the staff on base. He offers no judgement – he’s not really in any position to, honestly, with Hux sharing his bed, and he might actually start to feel bad about these gross violations of privacy if he did – just a statement of fact, to let them know that _he_ knows.

So when a mechanic looks scandalized as he ducks down to press a kiss against Hux’s neck, mind shrieking about improper uses for droids, Ben just gives him a bored expression, and says “Biths, huh?”

The Resistance base very quickly learns to leave him alone.

Rey doesn’t approve in the slightest. For one thing, Ben seems much too pleased to her about the vague sense of fear he’s stirred up in his fellow Resistance members. It’s creeping too close to something in the dark side of the force, enjoying things like that, so she threatens to tell Leia everything unless Ben starts joining Luke and his padawans for morning meditation again. She’s only partially appeased when he does, though; Rey still thinks Ben is being an absolute creep. He agrees, of course, he knows he is, so he promises Rey that he’ll stop once the message sinks in.  

Hux hadn’t entirely approved of the plan either, at first. It does paint a lurid picture of him as a mere object belonging to Ben – but then again, that’s the point. The more people believe it, the easier it is for him to hide his humanity in plain sight, and the less they see him as ‘General Hux of the First Order’ and more as Hux, the droid. They start to treat him much the same as they treat C-3PO, a curiosity in the background noise of their lives with the occasional use.

Slowly, life on the base begins to ease for the two of them, and Hux starts to believe he might finally, truly be free.

 

 

*

*

*

 

 

“Rey, dear, have you seen Hux?” Leia asks a few months later.

They’re in the middle of a new offensive – the First Order has started to regroup, a new leader at its helm, and undoubtedly another of Snoke’s puppets. Finn and Poe have just returned with a new batch of stolen data that needs to be sorted through as fast as possible to be of any use. With the fastest processor among their droids, the Resistance officers have finally relented to Leia's requests and they've been using Hux to dissect information lately. He is efficient and precise in his work, pleased to be given a task of his own, and is slowly gaining favour among the Admirals, too.

“Not since this morning,” Rey replies to her Aunt, reaching out in the force to find Ben. Wherever he is, Hux will usually be close by. “Hmm. Not in the workshop…”

Rey reaches out towards Ben’s ship and snags on a feeling she’s been waiting to pounce on for _months_.

“He’s in the ship,” she grins widely, “I’ll go get him right now, you stay put, General.”

She rushes out of the war room, pulling Finn up from his desk as she goes.

“Rey, what?? I’m in the middle of-“

“Come _on_ ,” she says insistently, tugging him along behind her, “we’re going to go get revenge on Ben for all those times he cockblocked us.” Finn is not a vengeful person, generally, but the thought of getting one back on Rey’s cousin hurries his pace. They pick up Poe in the airfield on their way, where he’s been working on his x-wing. He looks like life day has come early when Rey tells him where they’re going.

Carefully, Rey sneaks them up into the ship, and bursts into the living room.

She expected to find Hux and her cousin making out. At most, she expected some awkwardly tented pants and embarrassed faces. What she did _not_ anticipate was a very naked Ben buried balls-deep in Hux, who he has bent over the back of the couch.

Rey screams.

 _Ben_ screams.

Poe slaps a hand over Finn’s eyes.

Hux just looks annoyed, turning around to yell “Don’t go soft _now_ , asshole!” at Ben.

Rey screams some more. Vision still obstructed by Poe’s hand, Finn just looks confused. Rey calls the retreat, running screeching back out of the ship, Poe gently pushing Finn back towards the exit after her, but not before turning to give Ben an encouraging thumb’s up.

“We’re even now!” Poe says cheerfully. The pilot leaves the ship, closing the boarding ramp back up behind him.

To Hux’s great irritation, Ben pulls out and flops down on the couch with a wounded, mortified groan, mood well and truly ruined. He covers his face with his hands, refusing to move them when Hux tries to tug them away.

“This is the start of a war,” Hux announces furiously.

“Please, stars no, let this be the end of it,” Ben’s voice comes muffled through his fingers. “This is how I die, naked and embarrassed, it’s all over.”

The droid hums thoughtfully down at his lover’s theatrics. He gently circles his fingers around Ben’s softened cock, trying to coax it back to hardness, but Ben only stays buried under his hands in abject misery. An idea suddenly comes to Hux, slowly lowering himself down to rock his own erection against Ben’s body, leaning in close to whisper seductively in his ear.

“…If I do the wavy thing, will that get you back inside of me?”

“ _Hnnghh_.”

It works. It always does.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Ex Machina](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7757326) by [Kess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kess/pseuds/Kess)




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